On Thursday 9th January 2025, 39 Kent County Council (KCC) councillors out of 58 present voted to kill off Kent County Council and replace it with a mayoral authority; to kill off also 13 Kent Local Planning Authorities – district, borough and Medway councils – and replace them with 3 giant mega unitary councils within 2 to 3 years. 23 KCC councillors were not present. 18 KCC councillors (6 of the Green and Independent group, and 12 others, including the Liberal Democrat group) voted against this rushed and ill-thought-out reorganization that will hit the large, Kent population of 1.7million so very hard (1 abstention).
25 campaigners of Green Parties from across Kent were alone in protested publicly outside the County Hall last Thursday, 5 hours before a Conservative majority voted to replace
- 2 tiers of local govt (KCC & 12 elected district councils – struggling after 14yrs of cuts, that needed improvement) with
- 2 tiers of local govt (mayoral team without scrutiny & 3 unitary councils, each covering approximately half a million or more people, that needs lots of improvement).
We are told that Dover, Thanet, Folkestone and Hythe, Canterbury and Ashford, and District councils will be replaced by a single East Kent Unitary Authority which will have both the responsibilities of KCC (adult social care, transport, education, etc) and the current responsibilities of district councils (planning, housing, bins, electoral services, homelessness, economic development, community support, etc). Vulnerable aging communities in Dover and Thanet districts could in future be ruled from Ashford or Canterbury depending on where the new East Kent Unitary is based. You may have seen our public letters in the local Press 8 /9 Jan in the Mercury and Dover Express Letters pages.
We think there are many reasons to expect that the changes will deepen poverty levels in our vulnerable aging coastal communities instead of reducing them. It seems that Deal, Walmer, Dover, Ramsgate, Margate, Folkestone and Hythe towns and villages will find themselves far from the new Unitary Council decision-making in 3 years time. And will need to find new ways to stand up for themselves in front of the Unitary and Mayoral authorities and to call them to account.
It is very likely that Conservative leader Roger Gough of what is now the dying KCC will agree within days with another Ministerial decision (a.k.a. diktat) of Angela Rayner (Housing, Communities & Local Gov. ) to cancel KCC 2025 elections so that his Conservative party shapes the new administrations in his parties interest. He has not been happy that in 2023 and 2024 Green and Independent groups were voted in to take control of Folkestone and Hythe, Ashford and Maidstone Councils and were part of Swale BC administration until Labour Minister Rayner overruled the planning policy of SwaleBC. Currently there are 53 district level Green councillors in Kent and 5 county level councillors, working their socks off. And many more Green Party people elected to Town and Parish Councils where councillors work on a voluntary basis.
None of this change has had parliamentary process, all of it has happened by Ministerial decision in 3 weeks flat over the festive break without any details of funds to come to councils, a chalice offered by Labour Government in London to Kent Conservatives, convenient for both. The day after the vote at KCC, one councillor at DDC, C Woodgate, defected from majority group to the opposition Conservative group, presumably thinking that the decision on 9th January did advantage the Conservative Party and if selected as a Conservative candidate before the elections to the new Unitary Councils it might benefit him. Basic councillor allowances at KCC are currently £16,000.
Huge thanks will be due to local government officers who chose to keep vital services running while Kent is thrown in at the deep end to this sea of unpredictable change. It is change which is so convenient for the property developers that the new Labour government seems unwilling to regulate or guide towards building the social housing that is cheap-to-rent or buy, cheap-to-heat and energy efficient, close to services that young families can walk or cycle to. We have a Labour government that seems very unaware of how much communities in the garden of England need their green spaces and food-growing fields, woodland flood sponges, carbon-capturing, wildlife-harbouring grassland and wetlands.
‘The whole process stinks of some banana regime; some would say both big parties have betrayed the people of East Kent, who have blatantly been excluded from this top-speed decision-making process’, said Cllr Sarah Waite-Gleave.
Christine Oliver, Dover and Deal Green Party parliamentary spokesperson said, ‘We pledge to keep working to support our vulnerable coastal and rural communities in East Kent and to do our utmost to use all means possible to hold the new authorities to account. Please join us in this fight.’