ShepwayVox Dissent is not a Crime

Part 1: Lyminge Parish Council: A Serving Councillor on Bullying, Clerk-Bashing and a Toxic Breakdown in Governance

December 11, 2025 // 5 Comments

As a parish councillor with no family ties to the current (on-maternity leave) Parish Clerk, I have watched the behaviour of some of my colleagues on Lyminge Parish Council [...]

Kent County Council’s Own Population Projections Show an Ageing Crisis That Depends on More Migration and Births – While Its Reform UK Leaders Attack Both

December 11, 2025 // 1 Comment

When the leader of Kent County Council, Cllr Linden Kemkaran – pictured, went on KMTV after Rachel Reeves scrapped the two-child benefit cap, her message was blunt. [...]

KCC Leaders Meet Sir Roger De Haan in Folkestone: What’s on the Public Record?

December 10, 2025 // 1 Comment

A set of photographs posted online by Cllr John Baker (Reform UK, Kent County Council) shows a small delegation meeting in Folkestone with Sir Roger De Haan, followed by what [...]

Community Infrastructure Levy: How Much CIL Your Town or Parish Council Got in Folkestone & Hythe — and Where the Money Went (FHDC Data)

December 9, 2025 // 1 Comment

Across Folkestone & Hythe District, a distinct slice of Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) is passed out of the District Council’s hands and into the accounts of Town [...]

Kent’s £78.2m bus funding: where the money comes from — and where it goes next (Stagecoach, Arriva, Luxembourg, Delaware)

December 9, 2025 // 0 Comments

Kent’s buses are in line for £78.2 million of new funding. On paper, it is money to improve routes, cut fares and upgrade vehicles. In practice, a good part of it will be [...]

Kent MPs’ IPSA spending league table 2024–25: who claimed the most and least (total office, staffing, accommodation and travel costs)

December 8, 2025 // 0 Comments

Kent and Medway’s MPs claimed £3,591,044.17 in parliamentary staffing and “business costs” in the 2024–25 financial year (1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025), according [...]

Reform UK’s Kent Highways Contract: KCC’s “£50m-a-Year” Ringway Deal vs the Official £2bn Price Tag — Is It Value for Money?

December 8, 2025 // 0 Comments

Updated: 9 Dec @ 09:20 Reform-led Kent County Council announced on 19 November 2025 that Ringway will take over its core highways maintenance contract from May 2026, [...]

Folkestone & Hythe Developer Contributions: CIL & Section 106 Millions, Missing Data, and Infrastructure Funding Statement Compliance Failures (2020–2025)

December 8, 2025 // 0 Comments

Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s Infrastructure Funding Statement (IFS) is meant to be the public’s annual “receipt and report card” for developer [...]

Affinity Water: Executive Pay, Leaks, Outages and Emissions — What the Company’s Own Accounts Reveal (2018–2025)

December 4, 2025 // 0 Comments

Affinity Water has had a turbulent seven years. Executive pay and shareholder rewards have at times raced ahead of progress on leaks and service, and its environmental record [...]

South East Water Exposed: Rising Executive Pay, Foreign Ownership, and Repeated Outages — The Leaks, the Lies, and the Bills (2023–2025)

December 3, 2025 // 1 Comment

When the Prime Minister is being dragged into a local water outage and calling it “shocking” in Parliament, you’re no longer talking about a minor operational hiccup [...]

Folkestone & Hythe District Council Procurement Cards: DVLA, Amazon, Hospitality and Vouchers Exposed in 2022–2025 Spend Data

December 3, 2025 // 0 Comments

For more than a decade, procurement cards have been sold to the public as a simple idea: a controlled payment card for low-value goods and services, intended to cut paperwork [...]

Oportunitas: 11 Years In — Paper Profits, Still No Taxpayer Return – A Shepway Vox Team Investigation

December 2, 2025 // 0 Comments

Oportunitas Ltd a company wholly owned by Folkestone & Hythe District Council has never made a true profit for the council taxpayer since its incorporation in 2014. In [...]

UK Shareholder Register Gag: Companies Act 2006 Sections 116–119 Chill Public Scrutiny

December 2, 2025 // 1 Comment

In modern Britain, public money flows out through contracts every day — from Whitehall to county halls, from councils to the NHS. And so a simple, legitimate question [...]

Green cabinet member Stephen Scoffham’s clean-air blind spot in Folkestone & Hythe: no PM2.5/PM10 monitoring, no Smoke Control Areas

December 2, 2025 // 0 Comments

A familiar winter scene in Folkestone & Hythe is the smell of smoke hanging in the still air — sometimes cosy, sometimes cloying, sometimes downright intrusive. [...]

Kent & Medway Homelessness by District (2022/23–2024/25): Section 21 Surges, While Thousands of Homes Sit Empty

December 1, 2025 // 0 Comments

Between 2022/23 and 2024/25, every council in Kent and Medway has been feeding detailed case-by-case homelessness data to Whitehall through the national H-CLIC system – the [...]

Kent County Council’s Lobbyist: Policy Connect, Missing Spend Trail, and the Questions Over Who Pays for Influence

December 1, 2025 // 0 Comments

Kent County Council, like many other organisations and companies, uses a lobbyist to get its voice heard at government level. The lobbyist it has used most frequently is [...]

Kent County Council Adult Social Care Debt: Nearly £4m Written Off in Five Years as Costs Rise, Arrears Grow and Cases Go to Court

November 30, 2025 // 0 Comments

Kent County Council (KCC) has written off £3,919,551 of adult social care debt over the five financial years from April 2020 to April 2025, according to an FOI disclosure [...]

Mark Quinn: Quinn Estates’ Power, Philanthropy — and the Quinn Investments Accounts Behind Kent’s Biggest Developments

November 28, 2025 // 1 Comment

For most people in east Kent, the name “Mark Quinn” means big housing schemes, glossy CGI images and often fierce planning rows. Less visible is the quiet holding company [...]

Hythe Imperial Hotel, GSE Group and the Healey–Bowles Empire: Inside Kent’s Construction, Property and Truckstop Network. A Shepway Vox Investigation

November 27, 2025 // 0 Comments

When you walk along Hythe seafront, the Hythe Imperial Hotel & Spa looms over the promenade – a refurbished Victorian pile now marketed as a luxury coastal retreat. [...]

Otterpool Park Update: Millions Budgeted While Outline Permission Still Unissued; Homes England Recognises ‘Market Failure’ as 31 Dec 2026 Long-Stop Nears

November 26, 2025 // 3 Comments

By any normal measure, a council that “resolved to grant” outline planning permission, in April 2023, for a new settlement of this scale (8,500 homes) would be sprinting [...]

Folkestone & Hythe Warns Renters’ Rights Act Enforcement Is Underfunded: What the New Rules Mean for Evictions, Landlord Redress, the Property Portal and Illegal Evictions

November 26, 2025 // 1 Comment

Folkestone & Hythe District Council has issued an unusually candid note of caution about the Renters’ Rights Act: the duties are expanding fast, the practical [...]

Kent Council Debt 2024–25: Full Borrowing Breakdown for Kent County, Medway and Every District

November 24, 2025 // 1 Comment

Across Kent and Medway, council debt has not stood still over the past financial year. Between 31 December 2024 (Q3) and 30 September 2025 (Q2), total borrowing by the 14 [...]

From Kent Fields to Cayman Waterfront: The Offshore Life of Pentland Homes Boss James Nettlam Tory

November 24, 2025 // 0 Comments

When residents in Folkestone, Hawkinge or Ashford argue with Pentland Homes over traffic, contamination or yet another field turning into “executive homes”, the man who [...]

Part 3:Roger De Haan Charitable Trust: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Folkestone’s Million-Pound Philanthropy – A ShepwayVox Investigation

November 23, 2025 // 0 Comments

The Roger De Haan Charitable Trust (RDHT) – charity no. 276274 – is a family-run grant‐making foundation focused on Folkestone and south-east Kent. Its stated [...]

Part 2: Creative Folkestone’s charity arm accounts (2019–2024): A Shepway Vox Investigation

November 21, 2025 // 1 Comment

Creative Folkestone, the visionary arts charity at the heart of this seaside town’s cultural revival, has ridden a rollercoaster of fortunes over the past five financial [...]

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