Articles by shepwayvox

About shepwayvox (2362 Articles)

Our sole motive is to inform the residents of Shepway - and beyond -as to that which is done in their name. email: shepwayvox@riseup.net

New Folkestone Society Chair Matthew Jones on Heritage, Regeneration and Folkestone’s Future

May 5, 2026 // 0 Comments

A conversation with Matthew Jones, Chair of the New Folkestone Society, with Tony Quarrington also joining the discussion, on Folkestone’s past, present and future — from [...]

Reform UK Runs Kent. KCC’s Oracle Cloud Bill Has Risen 134%

May 4, 2026 // 0 Comments

Kent County Council’s new finance system may be necessary. But with the bill now heading past £30m, the question is brutally simple: how is this saving the people of Kent [...]

Kent Trading Standards: Fighting Organised Crime on Our High Streets

May 3, 2026 // 0 Comments

A BBC investigation has exposed the ugly new reality facing Trading Standards officers: threats, intimidation, weapons, criminal shopfronts, illegal tobacco, illicit vapes [...]

Folkestone’s Got Its Hat On

May 1, 2026 // 0 Comments

There are days when Folkestone can look like it’s had a hard paper round. We know the issues. We write about them often enough. Empty shops. Rough sleeping. Public money [...]

Kent Fire Response Times Raise Safety Questions

May 1, 2026 // 0 Comments

Kent Fire and Rescue isn’t simply getting busier. The more serious story is that it’s getting slower at reaching life-threatening incidents, while false alarms, road [...]

Palantir in Kent NHS: Trusts, Patient Data and the FDP Rollout

April 30, 2026 // 0 Comments

“The NHS is the closest thing the English have to a religion.” Nigel Lawson meant it as politics, but it works as a warning too. The NHS is not just another public body. [...]

Reform-Led Kent Council Acted Unlawfully Over Young Asylum-Seeking Care Leaver

April 29, 2026 // 3 Comments

A vulnerable young asylum seeker turned 18. Kent stopped treating him as a child in care and started treating him like somebody else’s problem. The High Court has now said [...]

Folkestone Invicta Women: Building the Future of Girls’ Football in East Kent

April 29, 2026 // 0 Comments

Folkestone Invicta Women won the league and cup in their first season, stepped up a division in their second, and are now building something bigger than results: a visible [...]

Folkestone Regeneration: Can £22m Heal A Town Of Two Halves?

April 28, 2026 // 5 Comments

Folkestone’s regeneration scheme began with a painful truth: the town was being described as “a town of two halves”. Now KCC is leading the transport and public realm [...]

Folkestone & Hythe HMO Licensing Gap: 312 Estimated Shared Houses, 63 Licences

April 27, 2026 // 4 Comments

Folkestone & Hythe says HMOs with five or more people in two or more households need a licence. Yet the latest MHCLG housing return points to an estimated 312 [...]

Epstein Files: Folkestone Reference Leads to Turner Painting, Not Local Scandal

April 27, 2026 // 0 Comments

The Jeffrey Epstein files are not entertainment. They’re part of the public record of a man accused and prosecuted by US prosecutors of sexually exploiting and abusing [...]

Folkestone’s Grace Hill Library Rescue: Who Pays the Bill?

April 26, 2026 // 0 Comments

Nearly three years after campaigners stood outside Grace Hill demanding that Folkestone Library be repaired, retained and reopened, the building has been saved from the [...]

The Long Read: Folkestone & Hythe School Places — Empty Desks, Deficits and Pressure Points

April 26, 2026 // 0 Comments

England’s school-place debate has changed. The national watchdog says falling primary rolls now “requires a coordinated response”. In Folkestone & Hythe, the local [...]

Rick Davies, Romney Marsh and the Making of Supertramp

April 25, 2026 // 2 Comments

We went looking for a local legend and found something better: a real Kent story. Not the inflated version, with Supertramp supposedly recording its first album on Romney [...]

Folkestone Invicta Promotion: Chairman Josh Healey on Club Growth and Next Season

April 24, 2026 // 2 Comments

Promotion has brought excitement back to Cheriton Road, but the bigger test starts now. In this interview, Folkestone Invicta’s chairman Josh Healey (pictured left) [...]

Folkestone & Hythe Has Kent’s Highest Band D Council Tax for the 23rd Year in a Row

April 24, 2026 // 1 Comment

The official Band D benchmark says Folkestone & Hythe has sat at the top of Kent’s council tax table since 2004-05. It did so under the Conservatives who ran the [...]

Kent County Council FOI Delays: ICO Finds KCC Breached Freedom of Information Law

April 23, 2026 // 0 Comments

Kent County Council missed the legal deadline on a request about Sir Roger De Haan’s Folkestone meeting with senior KCC councillors, and the Information Commissioner had to [...]

Trauma Does Not Exist? What Adler Really Meant About Freud, Determinism and Breaking Free

April 23, 2026 // 2 Comments

It’s one of those phrases that sounds less like psychology and more like a person picking a fight in a pub. But Adler was not denying suffering. He was challenging [...]

Folkestone Library Move: KCC Reopens in Sandgate Road as Grace Hill Faces Disposal

April 22, 2026 // 1 Comment

Kent County Council is reopening the library service in a privately owned Sandgate Road building while moving the old Grace Hill library towards disposal. Creative Folkestone [...]

Folkestone & Hythe Tops Kent Table for Serious Private Rented Housing Hazards

April 22, 2026 // 1 Comment

Kent housing officers said the local evidence base on poor housing conditions was “scarce”. Even so, MHCLG’s latest return shows Folkestone & Hythe with the highest [...]

Reform UK Hythe Leaflet Raises Missing Imprint Questions

April 21, 2026 // 0 Comments

A two-sided Reform UK leaflet delivered in Hythe is loud on Labour, loud on Kent, loud on potholes, loud on common sense and loud on “change”. What it doesn’t [...]

Renters’ Rights Act: Part 2 — What Folkestone & Hythe Tenants Need to Watch From 1 May 2026

April 21, 2026 // 1 Comment

The new law is bigger than section 21. The real tests will be whether loopholes open up, whether councils enforce, and whether the courts can cope once simple no-fault cases [...]

Folkestone & Hythe District Council Expenses: Officers Get Higher Meal Allowances Than Councillors

April 20, 2026 // 0 Comments

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others,” George Orwell wrote, and at Folkestone & Hythe District Council that principle appears to have [...]

Renters’ Rights Act: Part 1 — What Folkestone & Hythe Tenants Need to Know From 1 May 2026

April 20, 2026 // 0 Comments

From 1 May 2026, the Renters’ Rights Act starts changing how private renting works in England. For tenants in Folkestone & Hythe, the biggest shift is simple: a home [...]

The Long Read: Kent County Council’s PFI School Deals Still Cost Millions

April 19, 2026 // 0 Comments

The Government says PFI is over. Parliament has spent years tearing strips off it. The Treasury itself admitted the model became “tarnished by its waste, inflexibility and [...]

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