It had been six months since Folkestone & Hythe District Council had taken over Port Lympne. Nobody was entirely sure why, although there had been a Cabinet report, an exempt appendix, a business case, a risk register, two consultations nobody could remember being consulted about, and a press release announcing “an exciting new chapter for wildlife provision across the district.”
There had also been the photograph. Four senior figures stood proudly in front of their new headquarters, each holding an ice cream. Among them were Chief Executive Dr Susan Priest and Council Leader Cllr Jim Martin. The photograph was intended to convey optimism, confidence and a bright new future for the Council’s latest acquisition. It certainly conveyed ice cream. Why four senior figures were required to hold cones while the Council embarked upon the business of running a wildlife park remained less obvious.
The Council said the takeover would protect jobs, strengthen education, support biodiversity and create “a sustainable visitor attraction aligned with the Council’s emerging strategic green priorities.” Three weeks later it announced another round of savings.
That was when Andy Blazkowicz, Head of Operations, was asked to look at the animals.
Andy approached the problem professionally. He had spreadsheets, which immediately placed the animals at a disadvantage. The first revealed that lions ate meat every day. Another showed that giraffes required specialist veterinary care. Then Andy reached the elephants.
He stared at the figure on the screen.
“Good grief.”
His assistant leaned across the desk.
“Is that including VAT?”
“I don’t think VAT is our main problem.”
Elephants, it turned out, were astonishingly expensive. They ate enormous quantities of food and required reinforced fencing, specialist keepers, veterinary treatment, heated accommodation and considerable amounts of mud.
Andy had never regarded mud as a budget pressure.
Yet there it was.
£18,600.
Mud-related expenditure.
Further down came foot care, dental treatment, transport, insurance and several thousand pounds for something called behavioural enrichment.
“What’s behavioural enrichment?”
“Things to stop them getting bored.”
Andy looked through the window at several hundred acres of Kent countryside.
“They’ve got all that.”
“Apparently that isn’t enough.”
There were tyres, enormous rubber balls, tree trunks and complicated devices containing vegetables.
“Can’t they just think about things?”
His assistant did not know.
The Council’s finances were under pressure and Corporate Management had asked every service to identify “transformational savings opportunities without compromising frontline outcomes.”
Andy liked the phrase. It appeared to mean that something could disappear while everybody continued insisting it was still there.
A meeting was arranged. Finance attended, along with Procurement, Communications, Legal, Climate Change, Tourism and Transformation. Somebody from Corporate Strategy also appeared, although nobody knew exactly why. He had a laptop and nodded frequently, which seemed sufficient.
The elephant keeper was absent because he was looking after the elephants.
Andy opened the meeting.
“We need to maintain the visitor experience while reducing the cost base. In practical terms, we need elephants without necessarily having elephants.”
The room became quiet.
The Transformation Officer started typing.
Andy went to the whiteboard.
“What does an elephant actually do?”
The Tourism Officer thought about this.
“People look at it.”
“Exactly.”
“It walks around.”
“Does it have to?”
There was a pause.
“Generally, yes.”
Andy wrote MOVEMENT on the board and crossed it out.
“Does it perform?”
“No.”
“Give talks?”
“No.”
“Operate machinery?”
“Obviously not.”
The Climate Change Officer raised a hand.
“Elephants are ecologically important.”
“In Africa.”
The hand went down.
Andy drew something resembling a wardrobe with ears.
“What I’m proposing is a replica. Full-sized, anatomically convincing and weather resistant.”
Procurement looked interested.
“What material?”
“Rubber. Polymer. Something modern.”
“Recycled polymer?”
“Even better.”
Communications immediately saw possibilities.
“We could call it an innovative interpretive installation.”
Transformation went further.
“An immersive zoological experience.”
Everyone liked that.
Finance asked the important question.
“How much?”
A real elephant represented hundreds of thousands of pounds in lifetime costs. A manufactured one could apparently be obtained for £4,850.
By the time Procurement had finished, this became £7,200.
A visitor-experience consultant increased it to £9,600.
A structural assessment brought it to £12,400.
There was another £1,850 for signage.
The business case nevertheless remained positive.
Andy’s report described elephants as “high-cost legacy assets operating within an increasingly challenging financial environmental envelope.” Traditional elephant ownership involved “significant recurring biological expenditure.” The preferred option was therefore a “static elephant-equivalent visitor experience.”
Legal wondered whether paying visitors might object to an elephant which wasn’t actually an elephant.
Communications solved the difficulty with a sign:
“AFRICAN ELEPHANT – This animal is participating in our pioneering Low-Movement Conservation Programme.”
The proposal went to Cabinet. It was Item 14, the meeting had already lasted four hours, and nobody asked many questions.
Three weeks later, the elephant arrived under cover of darkness, folded into the back of a council transit van. This was considered preferable to delivering it during opening hours, when members of the public might have wondered why the district’s newest African elephant had arrived flat-packed.
Unfortunately, Procurement had ordered the self-inflating model without purchasing the compressor required to make it self-inflate. The omission had not been spotted because the compressor appeared on a separate line of the specification and therefore, technically, belonged to a different budget.
Two maintenance workers were consequently handed a pair of pumps and told to have the elephant ready by morning. They began after the gates had closed, working from opposite ends in the hope that this would somehow halve the problem.
By nine o’clock they had been pumping for nearly two hours. The elephant had acquired part of a stomach, one doubtful-looking ear and something which might eventually become a trunk. Taken as a whole, it was approximately the size and shape of a badly parked Renault Scenic, although considerably less convincing.
One stopped pumping.
“How big is this thing supposed to get?”
His colleague checked the instructions.
“Three point two metres.”
“Long?”
“High.”
They stared at it.
“Oh, for God’s sake.”
At half past ten the elephant possessed one ear, two knees and a trunk resembling a collapsed drainpipe. They stopped for tea.
“We’ve got to finish it tonight.”
“Why?”
“School visit tomorrow. Hundred and twenty children.”
The first man sighed.
“My granddaughter’s coming.”
“Does she like elephants?”
“She does at the moment.”
Around midnight one of them noticed the industrial compressed-air line on the workshop wall. He looked at the pipe, then at the elephant.
His colleague followed his eyes.
“No.”
“I haven’t said anything.”
“You don’t need to.”
Five minutes later the hose was attached.
The elephant expanded magnificently. Its legs straightened, ears unfolded, belly swelled and trunk rose. Within forty seconds an enormous African elephant stood in the workshop.
The two men stepped backwards.
“Bloody hell.”
“It’s convincing.”
“It’s enormous.”
“Andy wanted impact.”
The following morning Communications photographed it and issued a release headed:
“PORT LYMPNE UNVEILS INNOVATIVE NEW ELEPHANT EXPERIENCE.”
Andy was quoted saying: “This exciting project demonstrates how Folkestone & Hythe District Council can continue delivering first-class visitor experiences while responding responsibly to the financial challenges facing local government.”
Nobody mentioned rubber.
At ten o’clock a school party arrived. Thirty-eight children gathered outside the enclosure while their teacher opened a tablet.
“The African elephant is the largest land animal on Earth. Elephants are highly intelligent and communicate using sound, touch and vibrations through the ground.”
A boy raised his hand.
“Why isn’t that one moving?”
The teacher consulted the sign.
“It’s participating in a Low-Movement Conservation Programme.”
“What’s that?”
She read it again.
“I’m not entirely sure.”
Another child asked whether the elephant was asleep.
“No.”
“Is it dead?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
The teacher moved on.
“An adult African elephant can weigh more than six tonnes.”
At precisely that moment a breeze came up from the Channel.
The elephant trembled.
Thirty-eight children watched as one ear lifted, followed by the other. Then its front feet rose slowly from the ground.
A child pointed.
“IT’S FLYING!”
The elephant cleared the fence and drifted serenely above the enclosure while a keeper ran beneath it, arm outstetched. Visitors reached for their phones.
Within ninety seconds there was a video online. Within four minutes #FlyingElephant was everywhere locally.
FHDC’s Communications team issued a statement:
“We are aware of an incident involving one of the elephant exhibits at Port Lympne and are currently establishing the facts.”
The elephant continued south across Romney Marsh, drifting above fields and drainage ditches with the slow dignity of something that had every right to be there. A woman hanging out washing managed to photograph it on her phone, somebody called Kent Police, and another resident rang the Council to ask whether an elephant of that size required planning permission.
At 11.17am it crossed the Royal Military Canal. Kent Highways subsequently received six reports of a large grey object floating above the A259, although one caller described it simply as “an elephant going towards Dungeness.” By 11.23am that appeared to be exactly what it was doing, carried steadily across the Marsh towards the coast.
For a few minutes it looked as though the affair might end harmlessly somewhere among the shingle. Then the wind changed. The elephant turned slowly, drifted back inland and began losing height over a garden centre which, unfortunately, had recently enlarged its exotic-plant section.
It descended directly onto a particularly magnificent cactus.
The bang was heard some distance away.
Waste Services collected what remained the following morning.
An internal review identified weaknesses in governance, procurement, project management, inflation methodology, stakeholder engagement, meteorological assessment and elephant anchoring.
The Council announced that “lessons would be learned.”
No individual was found responsible.
Andy was promoted.
The children who witnessed the incident were never quite the same. Their teacher later reported that several had become suspicious of official notices. One refused to believe anything described as “innovative” while another reacted badly whenever anyone mentioned transformation.
A third, when subsequently told in a geography lesson that an African elephant could weigh six tonnes, raised his hand.
“Not council ones.”
And whenever those children are now told that something has been protected, improved, transformed or made more sustainable through efficiency savings, they ask the same simple question:
“Is it real?”
This has occasionally proved inconvenient for Folkestone & Hythe District Council.
