The BBC funds journalists to hold councils to account. But how much has gone to Iliffe Media, which owns KentOnline, and what has the public received in return? Shepway Vox follows the money.
Journalists ask questions. They examine public spending, challenge politicians and expose decisions that might otherwise escape scrutiny.
At least, that’s what they’re supposed to do.
On 2 November 2026, Prime Minister Andy Burnham backed the News Media Association’s Journalism Matters campaign, arguing that local reporting is essential to democracy, particularly as more political power moves from Westminster to local authorities.
He made an important point: “with greater local power must come local accountability.”
Few would disagree. But accountability works both ways, especially when journalism receives money from the BBC licence fee.
Following the BBC money
Since 2017, the BBC’s Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) has paid local news companies to employ journalists covering councils and other public bodies.
The idea is straightforward. Reporters attend meetings, investigate decisions and produce stories that can be shared with other participating news organisations.
It’s not simply a grant to produce articles for one newspaper.
In Kent, the contracts are held by Iliffe Media Group, based in Rochester, whose businesses include KM Media Group, the company behind KentOnline.
The BBC’s latest contract, awarded in April 2025, funds seven Iliffe reporter posts. Three cover Kent and Medway, two cover Hertfordshire, one covers Suffolk and another covers Rutland.
From July 2025, the BBC offered £40,790 annually for each reporter outside London, increasing by 2% from the second year. That’s £285,530 for Iliffe’s seven posts in the first contract year, assuming every vacancy is filled.
But we’ve taken the investigation further, tracing the group’s BBC-funded reporter allocations back through 2019.
Our Estimated BBC funding to Iliffe Group between Jan 2019 – 4 Nov 2026 is:
£1,165,203
Approximately £793,734 relates to Kent and Medway, with £371,468 relating to other areas.
These figures are estimates, not confirmed payments. They assume funded posts remained occupied and include some reconstructed historical funding rates.
That’s important because the BBC confirmed in a February 2024 Freedom of Information response that publishers receive no funding while reporter posts are vacant. It also confirmed that where a publisher’s employment costs are lower than the agreed funding, the publisher retains the difference. That doesn’t automatically mean profit: the money must also cover pensions, National Insurance, training, equipment and support.
There’s another difficulty. Companies House records show that Kent On Line Limited files dormant accounts. KM Media Group and Iliffe Media Group file accounts, but the BBC’s LDRS payments aren’t separately identified in the public figures we’ve examined.
So although we can estimate what Iliffe was entitled to receive, we still cannot establish precisely how much the BBC has paid it since 2019.
What has the public received?
The Shepway Vox Team examined 204 pages of KentOnline’s current and former Local Democracy Reporter author archives.
We identified 3,982 published article entries between 2019 and 4 November 2026, covering seven journalists.
Not every entry necessarily represents BBC-funded work. Some predate the reporter joining the scheme, and the figures don’t include every report shared with other publishers.
The more recent figures provide a useful picture of what appears on KentOnline
In the two complete years, 2024 and 2025, KentOnline’s reporter archives contained 1,347 articles.
Over the same period, the estimated BBC funding for Iliffe’s Kent and Medway reporting posts was £233,546.
Divide one by the other and the result is approximately £173 per published article.
That’s an illustration, not the genuine production cost of each story. Some archive entries may fall outside the BBC scheme, while qualifying reports can appear in other outlets. The calculation measures neither the quality nor the impact of individual investigations.
The reporters make their case
On 4 November, KentOnline published three articles marking the Local Democracy Reporters’ Day of Action.
Simon Finlay, who covers Kent County Council, explained why having journalists at council meetings matters.
He highlighted his reporting on Kent’s proposed local government reorganisation. His exclusive on plans to replace existing councils attracted more than 40,000 page views, according to his account.
He also described covering planning disputes, public spending and political controversy.
Robert Boddy, covering Medway, pointed to his investigation into developer contributions intended for healthcare. He found substantial sums remained unspent, while some money had gone towards self-help health pods.
He also highlighted the experiences of hospital workers facing financial pressure and a village affected by a level-crossing closure.
These are stories with genuine public interest.
Then there’s Daniel Esson, whose recent undercover investigation examined antisemitism and Holocaust denial within an extremist religious group in Broadstairs.
Esson said the investigation took around six weeks and involved covert recording, research and multimedia reporting, supported by colleague Meghan Shaw.
It’s difficult to argue that serious investigations of this kind have no value. They require time, experience and resources that many smaller newsrooms struggle to afford.
But there’s an important question about priorities.
The BBC’s published LDRS principles make clear that the scheme’s central purpose is scrutinising the decisions made by councils and other democratic institutions.
Other public-interest stories may be covered, provided they don’t detract from that central responsibility.
Who holds the journalists’ employers to account?
Here’s the difficulty.
The BBC pays publishers to employ reporters. Publishers decide how those journalists are managed and supported, while the BBC assesses contracts against performance targets.
But the publicly available information doesn’t answer some straightforward questions.
How much has Iliffe actually received each year? How many funded posts were vacant, and for how long? How many qualifying reports were submitted to the shared service? How much funding covered salaries, and how much covered other employment costs?
And, perhaps most importantly, are Kent’s councils receiving the sustained scrutiny the scheme was created to provide?
A story attracting 40,000 readers is undoubtedly an audience success. But a difficult question asked at a poorly attended council meeting may matter just as much, even if only a few hundred people read the resulting article.
That’s why value for money cannot be judged by clicks or article numbers alone.
Nor should the public be expected to accept a publisher’s account of its achievements without being able to examine the underlying figures.
The BBC should publish the actual payments made to Iliffe and the performance information needed to understand what those payments delivered.
After all, the money comes from licence-fee payers, and the purpose of the scheme is public accountability.
Local journalism matters. Independent scrutiny matters. And the journalists doing that work deserve proper support.
But those receiving public funding should welcome the same questions they routinely put to councils.
So, is Iliffe Media and KM Media Group’s BBC-funded local democracy reporting value for money?
Only you can decide that.
PS: For the sake of transparency, the Shepway Vox Team receives no funding from any external organisation. Everything we do is funded entirely out of the pockets of our own team members.
The Shepway Vox Team
Delivering Dissent Since 2015
