Late last year Labour central government, ministers Ms Rayner, and Mr McMahon (constituencies Ashton-under-Lyne and Oldham West) offered all English county councils the option to go for a fast end to county councils; to be replaced with ‘mayoral statutory authorities’.
The change that they labelled ‘devolution’, proposes a single elected mayor for Kent & Medway, without overview & scrutiny. The change included an end to Kent’s district councils; to be replaced with huge Unitary Authorities (UA), with 3 or 4 UAs to cover all of Kent.
Conservative leader of Kent County Council (KCC) Mr Gough, led his obedient Conservative councillors to vote on 9 January 2025 to end KCC, and to end our Kent district councils. Central government did not put Kent on the fast track for these sweeping changes, so our KCC election wasn’t cancelled.
We Green Party councillors and campaigners across Kent, and East Kent especially, protested loudly on 9th January and at parliament on 30th January. Because we believe reorganisation that takes voices away from communities is change for the worse, not change for the better.
The proposal is for PLANNING to be taken from district councils, a.k.a. local planning authorities, to become the responsibility of a future ‘mayoral strategic authority’. The voting arrangements for a new Kent mayor, under discussion currently, favour lobby-laden parties with money.
Will this help the garden of England? Will it protect our vital food-growing fields and orchards? We doubt it. We believe that reorganisation that favours bigger, more lobby-laden parties needs to be rethought.
Dover, Thanet, Folkestone & Hythe, Canterbury and Ashford have over 720,000 residents, and are the half of Kent that is most hard hit by austerity and the cost of living crisis. We believe that if all 5 East Kent district councils are lumped into one council / Unitary Authority area, with little funding to restore council services and redress the awful impoverishment we see on our doorsteps, this may well be change for the worse.
We suggest the change wouldn’t be so bad if East Kent were to be two Unitary Authorities: Dover, Thanet and Canterbury in one, Folkestone, Hythe and Ashford, Swale East in the other. It would result in less loss of voter voice, less loss of democratic accountability.
The shape of reorganisation on the table in April 2025 needs a LOT of improvement to become change that redresses social injustice in East Kent.
We Green Party KCC candidates and campaigners in Dover district are determined to speak up against a fake devolution, that makes things worse; to speak up for genuine devolution that empowers districts and communities in East Kent and pushes central government into restoring the funding that councils have lost over the 18 years since the banking crisis.