£267m in KCC Payments to Care Providers as One in Five Kent and Medway Homes Require Improvement or Are Inadequate

Nearly £267 million. That’s how much Kent County Council (KCC) recorded in residential and nursing-care payments between April 2022 and June 2026 to suppliers linked to care homes across Kent and Medway now rated Requires Improvement or Inadequate by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

Across Kent alone, eight care homes are rated Inadequate and another 88 Require Improvement. That’s 96 of the county’s 503 registered homes — almost one in five. Behind those figures are vulnerable residents whose safety, dignity and wellbeing depend on the care they receive. Yet substantial sums of public money have passed through the care system. So who’s checking what taxpayers are getting? What has KCC done about the warnings? And can Reform UK’s leadership demonstrate Best Value for every pound spent?

What the figures reveal

The Shepway Vox Team analysed 1,919,742 entries from KCC’s published invoices over £250, covering April 2022 to June 2026, and matched suppliers against CQC records. We then checked the live ratings on 16 October, rather than relying on the CQC’s downloadable directory, which had missing rating information.

The results are troubling. Of Kent’s 503 registered care homes, 325 (64.6%) are rated Good, 18 (3.6%) Outstanding, 88 (17.5%) Requires Improvement and eight (1.6%) Inadequate Another 64 (12.7%) have no published overall rating.

Medway, which has its own council, has 67 registered homes, including one Inadequate and 17 Requires Improvement. Across Kent and Medway combined, 114 of 570 homes — exactly 20% — are rated below Good.

What inspectors found behind the care-home doors

The eight Kent establishments rated Inadequate are Chaucer House in Canterbury, Temple Ewell Nursing Home in Dover, St Anselm’s Nursing Home in Deal, Pine Lodge Care Home in Sittingbourne, Manordene in West Kingsdown, West Hill Care Home in Dartford, The Vale Residential Care Home in Maidstone and Pilgrims Way Care Home with Nursing, also in Maidstone

At Chaucer House, CQC inspectors identified six breaches of legal regulations. All five inspection areas — safety, effectiveness, caring, responsiveness and leadership — were rated Inadequate. The failings involved safeguarding, dignity, staffing, person-centred care and governance. Its report was published on 25 June 2026.

At Temple Ewell Nursing Home, inspectors found significant shortcomings in safety, effectiveness and leadership. A warning notice was served on 9 June 2026 concerning failures in systems for assessing and managing risks and improving care quality.

At St Anselm’s Nursing Home, inspectors identified six regulatory breaches, including failures concerning medicines, consent and governance. CQC subsequently imposed conditions on the provider’s registration on 23 June 2026.

The Vale Residential Care Home presented another disturbing picture. Inspectors identified shortcomings in managing risks associated with choking, epilepsy and skin integrity. They also found weaknesses in safeguarding and reporting incidents.

Then there’s Pilgrims Way. Its October 2026 report downgraded the home from Good to Inadequate, identifying five regulatory breaches. Inspectors found that people weren’t adequately protected from abuse, medicines weren’t properly managed and necessary improvements hadn’t been prioritised. The home was placed in special measures.

The problems hadn’t appeared overnight. Back in December 2023, Pilgrims Way was rated Good overall but Requires Improvement for leadership, with inspectors identifying weaknesses in auditing medicines and monitoring residents’ call bells.

Different homes, different providers, different failings. But the recurring questions concern safety, management and whether warning signs resulted in effective action.

Where the money went

Our examination of KCC’s payment records identified £266,921,096 in adult residential and nursing-care invoice entries to suppliers associated with at least one care home currently rated Requires Improvement or Inadequate across Kent and Medway.

Of that sum, £106,158,471.59 was recorded between May 2025 and June 2026, during Reform UK’s administration. The figures are net of VAT and include credit adjustments.

The sums paid to individual suppliers are substantial. Hawkinge House Limited received £18.03 million in qualifying payments, including £8.02 million from May 2025. Priory Mews Healthcare Limited received £14.09 million, while Cornford House Limited received £6.99 million. The corresponding homes are currently rated Requires Improvement.

Other matched suppliers include West Hill Care Home Ltd (£5.43 million), Avante Care and Support Ltd (£4.13 million), Eleanor Nursing and Social Care Ltd (£4.13 million) and Manorville Care Homes Ltd (£1.37 million), each linked to at least one Inadequate home.

KCC also recorded approximately £4.92 million in net invoice entries under Pilgrims Way Nursing Home across the period, including entries outside the narrower residential and nursing-care classifications.

These are payments to suppliers, some of whom operate several homes. They can’t all be attributed exclusively to the poorly rated establishments. Nor can a home’s October 2026 rating be assumed to have applied throughout the previous four years. Nevertheless, the expenditure establishes the scale of the council’s financial relationships and raises legitimate questions about how quality is monitored.

On 21 May 2026, KCC’s Reform UK leader, Linden Kemkaran (pictured), declared:

“We set a responsible budget and developed a deliberate focus on how every penny of taxpayers’ money is managed and spent.”

Fine words. But knowing where public money goes isn’t the same as demonstrating that it delivers the services people need. Her statement focused on financial stewardship without explicitly addressing how the council measures Best Value in commissioned care.

Under section 3 of the Local Government Act 1999, councils must make arrangements for continuous improvement, having regard to three principles: economy, efficiency and effectiveness.

Economy means obtaining services at a reasonable cost. Efficiency means using resources productively. Effectiveness means achieving the intended results.

In care homes, that final test is crucial. A placement might appear economical and the invoices might be processed efficiently. Neither tells us whether residents are safe, properly cared for or treated with dignity.

The statutory Best Value guidance, issued in May 2024, specifically identifies weak commissioning and contract management resulting in poor-quality services as an indicator of potential failure. It requires councils to consider the balance between cost and quality. Revised guidance was consulted on in 2026, but the existing statutory duty already applies.

This doesn’t mean every poor CQC rating demonstrates that KCC has breached the law. It means KCC should be able to show what arrangements it has in place to identify failures, protect residents and secure improvements.

KCC Has Already Suspended New Placements — But What Happens Next?

Kent County Council’s own published care-home sanctions register reveals something significant. Seven of Kent’s eight care homes currently rated Inadequate are subject to its highest Poor Practice sanction, PP3. That means their contracts with KCC are suspended and no new council-funded placements can be made.

The seven are Chaucer House, Temple Ewell Nursing Home, St Anselm’s Nursing Home, Pine Lodge Care Home, West Hill Care Home, The Vale Residential Care Home and Pilgrims Way Care Home with Nursing. Chaucer House also faces the highest Contract Compliance sanction, CC3, while The Vale has an additional Adult Protection sanction, AP2. The eighth Inadequate home, Manordene in West Kingsdown, doesn’t appear on KCC’s published sanctions list. Why not?

So KCC has taken action. That’s important, and it should be acknowledged.

But there’s a rather large gap between imposing a sanction and demonstrating that the problems which prompted it have been resolved.

The register doesn’t disclose when each sanction was imposed, how long it’s been in force, how many KCC-funded residents remain in the affected homes or what improvements have actually been achieved. Suspending new placements might prevent further council-funded admissions, but it doesn’t, by itself, guarantee safer care for KCC funded residents already living there.

And that raises questions for Linden Kemkaran’s Reform UK administration. When were the Level 3 sanctions imposed? How many KCC-funded residents remain in these establishments? What additional monitoring has taken place? Have independent assessments confirmed that standards have improved? And why isn’t Manordene included on the published list?

There’s also the money. Where KCC continues funding existing placements at sanctioned homes, how does it establish that the care being purchased meets contractual standards? What happens when improvements aren’t delivered? And what evidence can the council produce to demonstrate that its decisions satisfy the three principles of Best Value: economy, efficiency and effectiveness?

KCC’s sanctions register tells us which homes have been restricted. It doesn’t tell us whether those restrictions have worked.

For vulnerable residents, that’s rather more important than the colour of a sanction on a spreadsheet. And for Kent’s taxpayers, it’s the difference between a council demonstrating that it has taken action and demonstrating that its action has made a difference.

The Shepway Vox Team

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