My Garden Shed Is Worth £475,000. Can Someone Lend Me a Fiver?
This is an entirely fictional Sunday satire. Any resemblance to an actual property company, its directors, financial forecasts or unusually enthusiastic valuations is purely [...]
Folkestone and Hythe
3,207 People on Foot Killed or Injured on Kent and Medway Roads, 2021–2025
Sixty-four pedestrians were killed on roads across Kent and Medway between 2021 and 2025. Another 840 were seriously injured. And beneath those two figures sits the most [...]
Otterpool Park: Westenhanger Fails Both New NPPF ‘Well-Connected Station’ Tests
The Government has just made building homes around well-connected railway stations substantially easier. There’s just one problem: Hillhurst Farm sits right next door to [...]
Otterpool Park Infrastructure Costs: £374m Inflation-Adjusted Benchmark for 8,500 Homes
There’s a number buried in another major Kent housing battle which deserves much more attention in Folkestone & Hythe. £36,500 per home. That’s what a viability [...]
Folkestone & Hythe Local Plan 2045: Can 15,600 New Homes Be Supported by Water, GPs and Infrastructure?
Folkestone & Hythe may need to plan for around 15,600 new homes by 2045, but the challenge isn’t simply finding enough land. The district must also prove it can deliver [...]
Get Off the Pavement: The Law Cyclists Ignore and Pedestrians Pay For
Guest contributor Alan has had enough of cyclists treating the pavement as an escape lane. He’s looked beyond the muttering and arm-waving to find out what the law actually [...]
Kent Local Government Reorganisation: KCC Considers Judicial Review of Option 4B
Reform-led Kent County Council says the Government selected a financially weaker model for reorganising Kent and failed to address serious concerns about the county’s [...]
Plug-In Solar Panels in Folkestone & Hythe: What Renters Need to Know About Landlord Permission and Planning
Plug-in solar could finally allow renters to generate some of their own electricity. But there’s an awkward catch: the person paying the electricity bill may still have [...]
Allard and Dunlop: Five Liquidations, £705,820 in Creditor Exposure and a Trail of Failed Companies
Update: 4/09/26 10:05am – See bottom of article. Between October 2016 and March 2026, five companies linked to William Dunlop entered creditors’ voluntary liquidation [...]
Nepal Disaster: Folkestone & Hythe Sends Messages of Hope and Comfort to Those Affected
The terrible events unfolding in Nepal and the wider Himalayan region will feel a very long way from Kent. But for many families across Folkestone & Hythe and the county, [...]
Kent’s AI Border Towers: £21m Spent as 153,000 People Arrived by Small Boat — Now the Home Office Plans to Spend £120m More
Walk west along the shingle at Hythe and, above the beach, an unusual structure looks out over the Channel. Roughly 18ft high, it carries radar and electro-optical and [...]
KCC Scraps £14.5m Junction 11 Waste Transfer Station for Folkestone & Hythe After £722,000 Spend
Kent County Council is preparing to abandon its planned waste transfer station (marked in orange below) beside Junction 11 of the M20, writing off around £722,000 already [...]
Child Pedestrian Casualties Heavily Concentrated in Kent’s Poorest Areas
Official figures expose widening gap in road deaths and injuries between poor and wealthy postcodes across Kent & Medway. Children living in some of Kent’s poorest [...]
Kent Local Government Reorganisation: Four Unitary Councils, Debt and Costs — Long Read
Kent knows where the new boundaries will run. It still doesn’t know who’ll inherit the mortgage. Steve Reed MP Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local [...]
Kent Local Government Reorganisation: Four Unitary Councils and One Almighty Hangover
What follows isn’t a leaked meeting or a quotation from any named council officer. It’s an imagined pub conversation translating Kent’s local government shake-up into [...]
Exclusive: Royal British Legion Says Reform UK Fundraising at Hythe Armed Forces Day Was Unauthorised
The Royal British Legion says Reform UK wasn’t authorised to claim any connection with the charity or fundraise on its behalf at Hythe Armed Forces Day. The local branch [...]
Free School Meals In Folkestone & Hythe Rise From One In Five Pupils To Almost One In Three
The free-school-meals (FSM) line in Folkestone & Hythe doesn’t wobble. It climbs. All-schools district data shows the rate rising from 19.8% in 2020 to 32.6% in 2026. [...]
Southern Water Drought Plan Exposes Kent’s Water Supply Crisis
Thousands have lived without love, not one without water. W. H. Auden Southern Water is telling us to think about drought before we have no choice. Not just hosepipe bans. [...]
Update: Otterpool Park Next Steps: Hillhurst Farm Land Questions Loom Over Public Exhibition
The next Otterpool Park exhibition isn’t just another afternoon of glossy boards, polite smiles and “your views matter” stationery. It’s the point where the proposed [...]
Child Poverty Falls in Folkestone & Hythe, But Housing Costs Keep Thousands Poor
Child poverty has fallen in Folkestone & Hythe in the latest figures. That is the good news. The harder truth is that the district remains one of Kent’s highest [...]
Update: Otterpool Park Water Plan Faces Climate and Supply Questions
Otterpool Park is not just a housing scheme. It is an 8,500-home test of whether a seriously water-stressed part of Kent can absorb a new town, a business district, schools, [...]
The Long Read: South Kent Energy Park’s 2,100-Acre Solar Gamble on Romney Marsh
Low Carbon says its South Kent Energy Park could power the equivalent of 140,000 homes. Its own scoping report also shows a much bigger scheme, on arable Marsh land, much of [...]
Exclusive: Homes England Secures Hillhurst Farm Land for Otterpool Homes
The next Otterpool Park housing move appears to sit in a very specific triangle of land at Hillhurst Farm, just south of the railway, east of Westenhanger station and around [...]
Kent Adds More Homes but Delivers Fewer Affordable Homes
New MHCLG data show Kent’s 12 district councils recorded 7,724 net additional homes in 2024/25, up almost 12% in a year when England’s total fell. But the county’s [...]
Dirty Air, Green Silence: Folkestone & Hythe’s PM2.5 Failure
Folkestone & Hythe is above the World Health Organization guideline for PM2.5. The council doesn’t directly monitor PM2.5. It has no Smoke Control Areas. It logged 129 [...]