Every Penny Watched? Reform UK’s Kent County Council Gets Three Red Audit Warnings as Public Webcast Goes Dark

When Reform UK swept to power at Kent County Council in May 2025, its newly appointed leader, Linden Kemkaran, told BBC Politics South East she’d approach running the authority much as she managed her household budget. The Shepway Vox Team questioned that comparison at the time. Running a £1.5 billion council, responsible for vulnerable children, older people, schools and public services, isn’t quite the same as balancing the family shopping bill.

A year later, on 21 May 2026, Kemkaran (below left) declared: “We set a responsible budget and developed a deliberate focus on how every penny of taxpayers’ money is managed and spent.” Her deputy, Brian Collins (below right), had been equally enthusiastic, assuring Kent residents that Reform’s efficiency team was investigating “every nook and cranny” to identify waste.

     

Fine words. Every penny watched. Every nook and cranny investigated.

Fast-forward to Thursday 15 October 2026. The council’s Governance and Audit Committee, responsible for scrutinising KCC’s financial accounts, safeguards and governance, met at County Hall in Maidstone. On its agenda were accounts originally published with numerous errors and an external auditor’s report identifying serious weaknesses in the council’s management of public money.

But anyone hoping to watch the meeting live online encountered something rather peculiar.

“Webcast has not started yet.”

For the first time in the committee’s established history of regular webcasting, the public couldn’t follow proceedings live. The meeting was scheduled for 2pm in the Darent Room, rather than the Council Chamber used for all past broadcasts. The council’s webcasting portal listed the meeting but didn’t provide the expected live coverage.

There’s an irony here involving Conservative councillor Harry Rayner – pictured, himself a member of the committee. Appearing on KMTV’s Kent Politics Show on 9 May 2025, Rayner praised the accessibility of KCC’s financial scrutiny. Referring to Governance and Audit Committee meetings, he declared: “Every single one of them is webcast.” That’s at approximately 18 minutes and 53 seconds into the programme.

Seventeen months later, Rayner’s assessment was rather less complimentary. Following Thursday’s missing webcast, he said: “Reform UK” who run KCC “cannot bear public scrutiny.”

That’s a political accusation, not proof Reform deliberately prevented the broadcast.

Nevertheless, KCC’s own 2013 webcasting protocol specifically identified the Darent Room as having fixed cameras. The stated purpose of webcasting was transparency, governance and accountability. Whether that equipment was operational on Thursday remains unanswered. What isn’t in doubt is that this was precisely the sort of meeting the public ought to have been able to watch.

The financial accounts that couldn’t get their own figures straight

Governance sounds terribly grand, but it’s pretty simple. It’s about having rules, checks and proper oversight so the people running an organisation act lawfully, make sound decisions and account for the money entrusted to them. Economy, efficiency and effectiveness means getting a fair price, avoiding waste and making sure taxpayers receive what they’ve paid for.

Now consider the accounts KCC originally published.

On 30 June 2026, the council released its draft Statement of Accounts for the financial year ending 31 March. These were official documents prepared by KCC’s professional officers, under the responsibility of its senior finance management. They weren’t produced by elected councillors, although councillors are responsible for providing oversight. Residents were invited to inspect the accounts between 1 July and 11 August.

A nine-page forensic review prepared by a member of The Shepway Vox Team and a retired s151 officer on 17 September subsequently identified 15 separate findings or matters requiring explanation. Some were unmistakable mistakes; others involved contradictory disclosures or technical accounting questions needing proper answers.

Take the cash figures. One note gave the previous year’s balance as £142.511 million, while the balance sheet and other statements showed £142.979 million. That’s a £468,000 discrepancy. Another table showed zero movement in school reserves despite the overall balance changing by £1.477 million.

Hardly reassuring.

Elsewhere, a council-linked business was described both as a wholly owned subsidiary and a 50:50 joint venture. The pension fund accounts contained contradictory descriptions of the valuation classification of £714.804 million in property. They even referred to pension regulations introduced in 2023 as though those regulations were still being drafted. Wrong dates and incorrect cross-references cropped up elsewhere.

One pension investment table couldn’t be reconciled using its printed movements, leaving an unexplained £84.947 million difference. That doesn’t mean the money was missing — the closing asset total agreed with the main pension statement. But surely accounts intended to explain billions of pounds of investments should contain enough information for someone to follow the arithmetic.

And these weren’t the only problems.

Grant Thornton, KCC’s external auditor, independently identified an £18.071 million misclassification in the financial-instruments disclosures: an amount recorded under fee income should have appeared under fee expense. It also identified typographical errors and other disclosures requiring amendments. These issues were corrected, along with several discrepancies identified in the forensic review, before the revised accounts were presented to the committee.

That’s welcome, but it raises an obvious question: what checks did KCC officers carry out before publishing the original accounts, and why didn’t those checks identify these problems?

The auditors expect to issue an unqualified opinion on the financial statements. That matters. There’s no established evidence here of fraud or missing public money. But an eventual unqualified opinion doesn’t mean the original published draft was free from mistakes, or that residents shouldn’t expect better document checks.

From checking the pennies to three red warnings

Beyond the draft-account errors lies a considerably more serious problem.

Grant Thornton’s Interim Auditor’s Annual Report rates KCC red across all three value-for-money categories: financial sustainability, governance, and economy, efficiency and effectiveness. Four significant weaknesses underpin those assessments. In 2024/25, governance was amber and economy, efficiency and effectiveness green. Both have deteriorated. KCC received three reds under the Conservatives in 2022/23, so Reform didn’t invent these problems, but the latest deterioration occurred during its first year in control.

KCC overspent by £21.6 million in 2025/26, including £42.9 million in Adult Social Care and Health. It promised £121.5 million in savings but delivered £98.6 million, leaving £22.9 million undelivered. Four consecutive years of overspending have depleted reserves, while another £21.4 million overspend was already forecast for 2026/27 at the first-quarter stage. Green councillor Rob Yates (pictured) says the Greens have “serious concerns about financial sustainability”. Grant Thornton warns that continued unplanned depletion of reserves isn’t sustainable.

Then there’s Oracle, the council’s troubled IT modernisation programme. Originally costed at £15 million, its reported cost has risen to £43.9 million. That’s £28.9 million above the original business case. The programme began under the Conservatives, although another £7.5 million was approved under Reform in July 2026. The auditors found that budget monitoring reports weren’t always sufficiently clear about escalating costs and risks.

For an administration promising to investigate every nook and cranny of expenditure, that’s quite some bill to explain.

Perhaps the most uncomfortable criticism concerns councillors themselves. Grant Thornton states: “We have witnessed member behaviour that is below what we would expect.” Auditors describe disrespectful challenges to officers, perceived politicisation of the audit committee and concerns about councillors overstepping their roles. There were 85 complaints about member conduct during 2025/26, although most were closed or resolved without formal investigation. Complaints aren’t proof of wrongdoing, but the auditor’s direct observations make the need for effective scrutiny abundantly clear.

And that brings us back to Thursday’s meeting.

There’s no established evidence that Reform UK deliberately stopped the webcast. Not broadcasting a meeting doesn’t automatically make it unlawful, and the agenda and reports remained publicly available.

But why hold such an important accountability meeting in a room from which the public couldn’t watch it live? Who made that decision? Was the meeting recorded? And when will residents be able to hear how councillors challenged the auditors’ findings and the officer-prepared accounts?

Those questions deserve answers, not silence.

Kemkaran promised to manage Kent County Council’s finances with the same care she gives her household budget. Three red audit assessments later, perhaps that wasn’t quite the reassuring comparison she imagined. Her deputy, Brian Collins, promised to investigate “every nook and cranny” in the hunt for waste. Yet KCC’s own officers handed residents draft accounts riddled with errors, contradictions and inconsistencies, while independent auditors identified serious weaknesses in the council’s financial sustainability, governance and ability to deliver value for taxpayers’ money.

And when the very committee responsible for examining those failings met, its customary live webcast was nowhere to be seen.

Perhaps there’s an innocent explanation for the missing broadcast. But the optics are dreadful. An administration elected on promises of financial discipline now presides over three red audit assessments, a £43.9 million IT programme and financial statements that require substantial correcting after publication.

Kemkaran and Collins promised to watch every penny. Instead, Kent residents have been left wondering who’s watching them.

Because it’s the public’s money, not Reform UK’s personal piggy bank. Residents shouldn’t have to take politicians’ word that everything’s being properly managed, especially when the auditors are telling a very different story. And when three red warnings are flashing, the last thing Kent needs is a blank screen where public scrutiny ought to be.

The Shepway Vox Team

Discernibly Different Dissent