Hamstreet Sewage Scandal: Why FHDC Failed to Act While Ashford Investigated
Residents raised a serious complaint about suspected foul contamination moving from Hamstreet towards Hythe and the sea. One council replied with site visits, [...]
Folkestone & Hythe District Council
Hythe Wood-Burner Pollution: Folkestone & Hythe District Council Challenged Over UCL Data
At Tuesday 3 March’s Overview & Scrutiny Committee, a revealing exchange played out over domestic wood burners and air quality in Hythe. Councillor Paul Thomas recalled [...]
Leas Pavilion Folkestone: Off-Plan Flat Buyers Left Exposed as Receivers Sell the Freehold
Folkestone’s stalled Leas Pavilion scheme has spent long enough as a visual punchline: hoardings, silence, and two concrete cores that look less like “luxury living” [...]
East Kent Sewage Pollution: Southern Water, Five Councils and the Statutory Nuisance Law
We’re The Shepway Vox Team, and over the past few weeks we’ve watched the same pattern play out again and again. Residents complain that sewage-contaminated discharges [...]
Folkestone & Hythe Customer Access Strategy: Digital by Choice or Digital Exclusion?
Folkestone & Hythe District Council has approved a new Customer Access Strategy 2026 -29, built around a simple promise: residents should be able to access council [...]
FHDC Homelessness Spending: Temporary Accommodation Costs Soar as Prevention Fund and Private Sector Offer Payments Rise
If you want to understand the housing pressure in Folkestone & Hythe, start with the bit that hurts: the emergency bill. Between April 2025 and January 2026, Folkestone [...]
Folkestone & Hythe Council Budget: Council Tax Rise, Reserves Drawdown and Debt Repayment Shake-Up
Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s budget debate yesterday evening didn’t hinge on a big, obvious “cuts list”. It hinged on something far less [...]
Folkestone & Hythe’s Risborough Barracks Deal: Taylor Wimpey Payments Revealed as Temporary Accommodation Costs Soar
Folkestone & Hythe District Council has so far paid Taylor Wimpey £2,390,013.56 towards the Risborough Barracks affordable homes scheme, based on supplier payment data [...]
Mandatory DBS Checks for District and Parish Councillors: The Russell Tillson Case
In the long shadow of the “Epstein files” debate — where public trust has again been tested by questions about powerful men, elite networks and who knew what — the [...]
Folkestone & Hythe’s Emissions and Biodiversity Record Was Built Under Conservative Leadership
A new Folkestone & Hythe District Council scrutiny report gives a detailed picture of carbon emissions and biodiversity policy. It also raises an important point of [...]
Folkestone & Hythe District Council: Councillors Challenge Youth Football Fees, Hythe Pool Spend, Princes Parade Delay and Southern Water
Folkestone & Hythe District Council meets in Full Council on Wednesday 25 February at 7pm, and councillors have published a set of questions that range from the price of [...]
Folkestone & Hythe District Council: Cash Withdrawals on Purchase Cards, Weak Evidence, No Questions Asked
A routine internal audit update to Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s Audit and Governance Committee has surfaced an awkward line that deserves far more daylight [...]
Southern Water Legal Action: Folkestone & Hythe District Council Escalate Sewage Pollution Fight
Folkestone & Hythe District Council, Southern Water and the Environment Agency faced residents and campaigners in the same room on Thursday 19 February, to discuss sewage [...]
Madeira Walk Landslide: Folkestone Leas Playground Cliff Stabilisation Cost Rises to £400,000
Madeira Walk was shut on 29 February 2024 because the ground above Folkestone’s Lower Leas playground looked as if it might go. Two days later, on 2 March, it did: the [...]
FHDC Budget 2026/27: Paying £63,000 a Year for Empty, Unlettable Otterpool Homes
The council’s budget papers for 2026/27 admit it is now paying ongoing costs on four Otterpool properties sitting empty, “not fit to be let”, while housing pressures [...]
FHDC Budget 2026/27: The £38k Saving That Weakens Contract Oversight
Here’s the £38,280 “saving” in Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s 2026/27 budget (item 12) that ought to set off the loudest alarm in the building — because [...]
Folkestone & Hythe District Council Budget 2026/27: Council Tax, Reserves and Debt
Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s 2026/27 budget (item 12) goes to Full Council on Wednesday 25 February with a headline most residents will miss, because it [...]
Folkestone & Hythe Housing Register: The Five-Bedroom “Ghost Queue” Trapping 11 Families
This is a Guest Post On the Folkestone & Hythe District Council housing register there is a category that, on paper, looks normal. In practice it behaves like a dead end. [...]
Folkestone & Hythe Council Fees: Prices Up Since 2019 — Are You Paying More Than Inflation?
Most people never read a council’s fees and charges appendices unless they absolutely have to. You only encounter them at awkward, very human moments: when you need a copy [...]
Hythe Bay Bathing Water Warnings: Sewage Pollution and E. coli from Hythe to Dungeness
Hythe Bay’s “no swim” problem didn’t start in the 2020s. It has a paper trail that runs from the mid-1970s, through the coliform “fail” tables of the 1980s, into [...]
Controlled Parking Zones: What FHDC Must Fix Before Adopting Its CPZ Policy
Controlled Parking Zones are arguments over a finite resource: a few metres of kerb outside your home or shop. From Snargate to Sellindge, Lydd to Lyminge where streets can [...]
FOLCA Folkestone: FOLCA 1 Saved for Retail-and-Flats, Sale Funds FOLCA 2 Medical Centre
Folkestone’s long-stalled FOLCA project has entered its most consequential phase yet: FOLCA 1 is being sold, FOLCA 2 is being refurbished, and councillors are now publicly [...]
Sunshine Bistro Folkestone: Owner Faces Losing Alcohol Licence Over Illegal Workers
Council hearing today will decide fate of Sunshine Bistro after immigration enforcement raid uncovered four illegal workers Sunshine cafe, the popular town centre restaurant [...]
Temporary Accommodation Costs Hit Record High at Folkestone & Hythe District Council, Passing £1m
Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s spending on temporary accommodation has now crossed £1,052,870 in the current financial year, according to the council’s [...]
Folkestone Sports Centre Trust: From £150,000 Council Grant to Administration — What the Sale Price Reveals
Folkestone Sports Centre didn’t die because it had nothing. It died because it had no money where it mattered: in the bank. That is the central message running through the [...]