Catch up on the latest political news from across Kent with Sofia Akin, joined by Medway Liberal Democrat Stuart Bourne, as well as Labour Councillor Jack Packman from Thanet District Council.
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00:02 - Hello and welcome to the Kent Politics Show
00:27 live on KMTV.
00:29 I'm Sophia Akin.
00:30 Now this year there were more than a million incidents
00:33 of fly tipping across England.
00:35 It was released this week from last financial year
00:38 with Medway identified as the worst area
00:40 for fly tipping in Kent.
00:42 And with electoral boundaries changing,
00:44 what does this mean for us here in our county?
00:47 We've been speaking to the Kent MP
00:48 who says the new boundaries are chaos.
00:51 But first, Medway is the worst area in Kent
00:54 for fly tipping with more than 4,500 incidents
00:57 recorded between April 2022 and March last year.
01:01 In fact, it ranked third highest
01:03 in the table of incidents across the Southeast
01:05 in statistics released by the Environment Agency this week.
01:08 Nationally, this is an even bigger problem
01:10 with more than a million fly tipping incidents
01:12 reported last financial year.
01:15 We're now joined with Medway Liberal Democrat,
01:17 Stuart Bourne, as well as Labour Councillor,
01:19 Jack Packman from Thanet District Council.
01:21 Welcome to you both.
01:23 Now, these are some pretty shocking statistics
01:25 that we heard released this week by DEFRA
01:27 from the last financial year, starting with more than 4,000
01:33 incidents in Medway.
01:34 It's something that the Liberal Democrats in Medway
01:37 talk about a lot, isn't it?
01:38 So what was your kind of response
01:40 to hearing that this week there were so many incidents
01:43 in Medway?
01:44 Well, truly enough, I wasn't surprised at all.
01:47 I mean, you speak to a lot of residents.
01:49 You speak to a lot of people around Medway.
01:51 And fly tipping is number one in some
01:52 of the issues they talk about.
01:54 I've got personal experience.
01:55 I've talked to residents where they've
01:57 got garages that have been ripped open and stuff dumped
02:00 in there repeatedly over a course of five or six years.
02:04 And Medway Council have not done anything about this,
02:06 not even put a CCTV camera up.
02:08 And then I speak to my colleagues over in Strood,
02:11 who then helped an area under the Wainscroft bypass
02:16 get removed some fly tipping.
02:17 There were over 1,300 tonnes of fly tipping that were removed.
02:21 And it cost Medway Council over 400,000 pounds to do this.
02:25 This has been dumped there for years and ignored.
02:28 Quite frankly, we need a council to get a grip of this
02:30 and sort it out, whether it's more
02:32 CTV to unknown areas or look into the commercials aspect
02:36 of it, because I would imagine a lot of this fly
02:38 tipping comes from commercial firms.
02:40 And whether the cost for them to dump it
02:42 in a legal, sensible place is too much for them.
02:45 So maybe we have to bite the bullet and reduce the cost
02:48 and save the money in long term from cleaning up
02:50 the rubbish in our fields and streets.
02:52 There were more than 1,000 actions taken by the council.
02:55 So it was last financial year.
02:57 So at this point, it would have been the Conservatives actually
03:00 running the council.
03:01 And I spoke to the current Conservative leader, Adrian
03:04 Goulvan, who said actually, as you said, a lot of it
03:07 is commercial incidents.
03:08 So before we go on to than it with you, Jack,
03:11 we can actually hear from Adrian now.
03:14 There's a distinction between having
03:16 covert and overt cameras.
03:18 We can put overt cameras up.
03:23 And that would act as a preventative measure.
03:27 But the legislation makes it very difficult
03:30 to have covert cameras where you hide the camera away
03:34 and hope to get the number plates of the perpetrators.
03:39 The circumstances you can do that with are rather difficult.
03:43 It has to be signed off by the chief legal officer
03:47 in every case.
03:49 And I understand, yes, that people's privacy
03:54 needs to be respected.
03:56 But I think this crosses the line.
03:59 And I personally feel that having covert cameras
04:04 would be a useful tool for us.
04:07 So that was Adrian Goulvan, who currently
04:09 is running the Conservative group who were running
04:13 the council at the time.
04:14 And we did hear from the Labour group
04:16 who are currently running the council who
04:18 said that they've introduced free bulky waste
04:20 collection for all residents, allowing items to be collected
04:23 and booked easily and quickly.
04:24 So hopefully we should start to see
04:26 that these fly tipping incidents go down
04:28 if Labour do stick to their pledge.
04:30 We'll have to see how that pans out.
04:32 Let's take a look at those statistics
04:35 across Kent and Medway.
04:36 Medway is the worst across Kent.
04:39 But actually Canterbury was pretty close behind it.
04:43 And we also saw Thanet with a huge number of fly tipping
04:48 incidents as well.
04:49 And we'll see the rest of the figures
04:52 popping up on the screen.
04:54 In most cases across Kent, in the high 100s,
04:58 and most cases more than 1,000.
05:00 So Jack, how was it to hear that the incidents in Thanet
05:06 were also pretty high for last financial year?
05:10 Yeah, they are.
05:11 And my frustration, just like Stuart really,
05:13 is fly tipping is just not acceptable.
05:16 And out of the 2,500 incidents that Thanet have seen,
05:20 only 98 fixed penalty notices were given.
05:23 And I think that comes down to the lack of funding
05:26 and the constant cuts that we've seen over the last 14,
05:30 15 years to the front line of local government.
05:34 And places like Thanet District Council
05:37 and the other district councils across Kent
05:40 are all facing the same kind of budget restraints.
05:43 So there's got to be ways that this can be enforced.
05:48 And I know kind of Labour policy from central government,
05:51 from Steve Reid, is around kind of introducing clean up squads
05:55 and kind of enforcing people.
05:57 If they make the mess, they clean the mess up.
05:59 And this will then obviously result
06:00 in a fixed penalty notice being given, and eventually
06:03 maybe prosecution if it carries on.
06:06 But this can only come if investment
06:08 is given to local authorities.
06:11 And certainly that's not happening.
06:14 So we're going to constantly see fly tipping.
06:16 It's really welcoming to hear from central government
06:19 that they're scrapping the fees at waste and recycling centres
06:24 to an extent.
06:24 So that's really encouraging.
06:26 And the booking system also has had an effect, I think,
06:30 on waste and recycling centres.
06:31 To one extent, it's a good system
06:34 because it enables people to get assistance in advance
06:37 of waste and recycling centres.
06:39 But it also does put people off, and certainly those
06:42 that are digitally excluded, they certainly
06:45 can't access the site.
06:46 So there are things that are putting barriers into people
06:50 taking their waste to the right place.
06:52 You mentioned what the government can be doing.
06:54 But let's talk about the issue a bit more locally,
06:56 as there are more than 2,000 cases in Thanet.
07:00 And of course, we know Labour is now running the council.
07:03 Previously, it was a no overall control
07:05 Conservative administration.
07:08 So how are you going to ensure now
07:09 we heard from Medway Labour saying
07:11 they'll introduce free bulky waste collection.
07:13 We'll have to see how that pans out.
07:15 What will the Labour group in Thanet
07:16 do to make sure that we're not seeing
07:18 these cases stay pretty high?
07:22 Yeah, Councillor Albon, our cabinet member for waste
07:24 and recycling, is really keen to mirror
07:28 the similar schemes.
07:29 But we are waiting to see how they pan out
07:31 and the effect that they have, and obviously
07:33 the effects and impact it will have on the budget.
07:36 So the street cleaners cleansing team here in Thanet
07:40 are brilliant.
07:40 Once we report the fly tipping, they
07:42 are out pretty much the same day, if not the next day,
07:45 to collect it.
07:46 But I think the real issue is the lack of money
07:50 to do the enforcement side.
07:52 Because we can sit there and we can go and collect
07:54 this waste and recycling that's been dumped on our highways
07:58 and on our farmland.
07:59 We can't forget the farmland either.
08:01 But we do need to have that money
08:04 to be able to employ enforcement officers.
08:07 And that really gives them the local authorities
08:10 an incentive to employ enforcement officers
08:12 if they are receiving 100% of the fixed penalty notices.
08:16 Because then the role will pay for itself.
08:18 And hopefully, then eradicate the problem
08:20 over time where visible enforcement is happening.
08:24 But that's where the problem is occurring,
08:25 is it's not being enforced to the extent
08:28 that I would like to see.
08:29 Let's talk about the enforcement then.
08:30 How easy is it actually to catch the perpetrators?
08:33 Because a lot of the time, this waste
08:35 is just dumped along the road where there are no cameras.
08:38 And Stuart, you were saying there needs to be more cameras.
08:41 But how easy is it in, say, those agricultural areas
08:44 where typically there aren't many CCTV cameras, how easy
08:47 is it to actually implement this and actually
08:49 catch the perpetrators and hopefully prevent them
08:51 from doing it in the first place?
08:54 It's almost impossible when you've got a farmland
08:56 and square miles of country.
08:58 You can't put a CCTV camera everywhere.
09:00 There are ways you can do that.
09:01 The enforcement officers are quite smart in identifying
09:04 perpetrators from the waste.
09:06 They can actually find a letter or a letterhead in it
09:08 and they can almost track the waste back.
09:11 But that takes investment.
09:12 It takes time and money.
09:13 A lot of councils can't afford that.
09:15 So maybe we have to look up and look
09:18 into ways we can look how these commercial firms dump
09:22 their waste and see if we can bypass them dumping it
09:24 by looking at it, see if we can get them to not charge
09:28 for commercial waste.
09:29 Most of the incidents were just roadside incidents, though.
09:32 So there were a lot of commercial ones.
09:34 But a lot of them were just people
09:35 dumping them along the road.
09:37 Yeah, and that's just bad manners from people.
09:39 And educational systems need to be
09:41 enforced to make people realise that you can't just chuck
09:44 your litter outside your windows.
09:46 And there are free waste centres both in Medway and Thanet
09:50 where people can take it to their rubbish tip
09:55 as well, just so that members of the public
09:58 are aware of that as well.
10:02 But Jack, I just wanted to ask you as well.
10:05 We saw just more than 1,000 actions taken in Thanet
10:11 and a similar sort of number in Medway, too.
10:13 So how will the current Labour group in Thanet
10:17 ensure that perhaps you are being a bit stricter on those
10:20 who are doing it and actually catch them when they're
10:22 doing it in the first place?
10:26 I think I agree with Stuart.
10:27 It comes back to education.
10:28 It comes back to where people can report this to happen.
10:32 A lot of people on social media moan
10:35 that they've just seen somebody dump a fridge or dump a sofa
10:38 on the back alley or something.
10:40 And then when we contact them, we say, well,
10:41 did you get a registration number?
10:43 Oh, I didn't know I needed to.
10:45 I think the power needs to be put back in people's hands.
10:47 We can't be eyes and ears everywhere.
10:49 We can't put CCTV in every sort of angle
10:52 in every back alley, every farmland.
10:54 So we do have to rely on a bit of cooperation
10:56 from the public.
10:57 And certainly, since being elected here
10:58 in Dane Valley in Thanet, I've certainly
11:01 had a lot more intelligence come my way,
11:03 because it's about that education of residents.
11:06 How do you educate people in stopping them?
11:08 How do you actually educate them?
11:09 Because it's kind of common sense
11:11 that you don't just dump your rubbish on the side,
11:13 but people are still doing it.
11:14 So how can we actually educate people properly?
11:17 I think it does come down to that enforcement,
11:19 unfortunately.
11:20 The people that do dump the rubbish
11:22 on the side of the road and things like that
11:24 are going to do it.
11:25 It comes back to that you can't control everybody's actions
11:29 and change people's behaviours.
11:31 So I do think it comes down to that enforcement.
11:33 The more visibility of enforcement that we have,
11:36 and it comes back to the pledge to put in more police
11:39 officers on the street, PCSOs, community officers.
11:42 It comes back to putting those civil enforcement officers
11:44 on the street to kind of be visible.
11:47 And like I say, educating the public
11:49 to where they can report it and what information
11:51 that we do need to be able to catch the people that
11:53 do dump the rubbish.
11:53 We'll have to leave it there.
11:54 Time for our ad break.
11:55 We will catch up with you both after the break.
11:57 See you in a few minutes.
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15:10 Hello, and welcome back to the Kent Politics Show live on KMTV.
15:14 Now, as the general election looms, voters in Kent and across the UK
15:18 may be voting under a new constituency.
15:20 We'll see a new seat form in Kent, the Wealds.
15:23 It'll mean Maidstone becomes much smaller.
15:25 We'll also see Ashford covering less ground than before
15:28 and big changes for Thanet too.
15:30 North Thanet will lose Margate and become known as Herne Bay and Sandwich.
15:34 And South Thanet will now change to East Thanet.
15:36 Our reporter, Miriam Bagassa, has taken a look into these boundary changes.
15:41 Kent's boundaries and maps are changing ahead of the general election.
15:45 The Boundary Commission for England has reshaped Kent's constituency
15:48 as to ensure that each MP roughly represents the same number of voters.
15:53 What does this mean for you?
15:55 Many of you will find that the constituency you live in has changed,
15:58 which will impact who you can vote for.
16:00 One of these changes is that Kent will have an extra MP
16:03 after the general election.
16:05 The City of Kent will be a new seat formed from parts of Maidstone
16:08 and the Weald, Faversham and Mid-Kent, Ashford, Folkestone and Hithe.
16:13 This will mean that Maidstone will become smaller.
16:16 The new Ashford constituency will also cover far less ground than it used to.
16:20 North Thanet will lose Margate and extend south to become Herne Bay and Sandwich.
16:25 Margate, Broadstairs and Ramsgate in the eastern tip of Thanet
16:28 will become a constituency called East Thanet.
16:31 But what do you know about these changes?
16:34 I was talking about it yesterday but I don't really know how it's going to change.
16:37 I've only just heard about it today so I've got no clue.
16:40 I think generally speaking it would just be a good idea
16:43 if we just had more information about the candidates
16:47 and if I had no idea that the area was changing.
16:51 It's quite common around the world though isn't it?
16:53 As population changes you have changes in boundaries.
16:55 As we've heard from members of public in Kent,
16:57 a lot of people don't actually know that the boundaries of constituencies are changing.
17:01 However, there are tools that you can use online to help you.
17:05 All you need to do is enter your postcode,
17:08 press search and it will reveal your constituency.
17:12 We spoke to Sir Roger Gale, MP for North Thanet
17:15 and Conservative Prospective Party candidate for the newly formed seat of Herne Bay and Sandwich.
17:20 Everybody needs to understand that this is not the government changing the boundaries.
17:24 This is a completely independent commission whose job is to look at the figures
17:28 and that's really all they look at and decide whether a constituency
17:32 has got too many electors or too few electors.
17:35 But that domino effect goes right across the county.
17:38 So there are lots of changes that people don't really understand
17:42 and don't particularly want.
17:44 So, why were these changes made?
17:48 We were required by Parliament to conduct a review of all constituencies in England.
17:53 Kent currently has 17 constituencies.
17:56 There will now be 18 constituencies.
17:59 We're required that every constituency is between roughly about 70,000 to 77,000 electors.
18:06 So there has been an enormous amount of change, not just in Kent, but throughout the whole country.
18:12 With a general election now looming,
18:14 Kent residents will be keen to know where they need to vote and who they're voting for.
18:19 Miriam Bogossa for KMTB.
18:22 If you want to hear more from Roger Gale, you'll be hearing more from that chat in Kent tonight,
18:26 straight after the break.
18:28 But still with us today is Medway Liberal Democrat Stuart Bourne,
18:31 as well as Labour councillor Jack Packman from Thanet District Council.
18:36 Thank you both for sticking around.
18:38 So, Jack, I wanted to come to you first.
18:41 We heard from Roger Gale, who's been in the North Thanet seat since 1983.
18:46 And we heard him particularly concerned about these changes
18:51 because his North Thanet, as he put it, will cease to exist.
18:54 And it's now going to be known as Herne Bay and Sandwich.
18:56 Do you share these similar concerns that perhaps constituents aren't actually going to know what constituency they're in?
19:04 Yeah, I do. And I do share his concerns.
19:07 And I think the funniest thing I've actually heard from a resident is Margate train station is now actually in Herne Bay
19:14 because of the boundary, boundary change.
19:17 And where I live, my house was in the North Thanet boundary change.
19:22 And the only reason I know about it is because I'm in politics.
19:25 You know, the communication hasn't been great.
19:28 And I think there'll be a lot of confusion come the next general election about where your polling station is,
19:33 but also who to vote for.
19:36 And I certainly think that, you know, especially the Herne Bay and Sandwich seat kind of was a bit of a forgotten patch,
19:41 because if you look at how it was, how it was put together, it was kind of put around East Thanet.
19:47 So I don't think there's been a lot of thought out for the public.
19:52 And I certainly think that, you know, places like Herne Bay and Sandwich is just kind of being clumped together.
19:57 We've seen Roger Gale keeping his constituency for more than 30 years, if I've done the maths right.
20:03 Are you concerned looking forward to the general election? It doesn't seem to want to leave his seat.
20:08 Are you concerned that Conservatives will keep that seat in North Thanet, even with these boundary changes?
20:15 Well, it won't be North Thanet anymore, it'll be Herne Bay and Sandwich.
20:17 But are you concerned looking forward to the general election?
20:22 I'm not concerned. I'm actually excited, because I think if you look at the demographic change, you know,
20:28 forget about the boundaries, but if you think about demographic change and people moving, you know,
20:33 to come and live by the coast and things like that, you know, there is more now a Labour appetite.
20:39 So I think, you know, for the first time probably in the 40 years that he has been an MP, you know,
20:44 I think it could be kind of one of the closest kind of contested constituencies.
20:50 So, you know, I think I am quite looking forward to seeing what pans out within that kind of boundary.
20:55 And I think, you know, for the first time in 40 years that Labour may, you know, may have a chance of kind of gaining.
21:03 But, you know, let's not take it away from Sir Roger Gale.
21:06 He has been a good MP and he's very well respected across the boundary.
21:10 And looking at Medway, Stuart, first of all, there are three MPs in Medway.
21:15 And looking from that report there, we saw residents pretty confused, actually, who their MP was,
21:21 but also which constituency they were in.
21:24 So looking at that, looking at these boundary changes, which we know kind of has to be done as the population figures change.
21:31 Do we need to perhaps be educating people more about what constituency they're in as the voters out in Medway didn't seem too sure on the whole?
21:40 Oh, yeah, absolutely. And we've always had these really confusing boundaries in Medway.
21:44 I mean, the prime example is Chatham High Street, not in Chatham constituency.
21:48 It is in Rochester and Strude. Likewise, Chatham Dockyard is not in Chatham.
21:53 So we've always had these strange boundaries and people have always been confusing.
21:56 But what we're going to have realised is, I think that hit the nail on the point, was that they don't know who to vote for.
22:02 So normally in an election, the incumbent is always going to be favoured over the newcomer
22:07 because residents have a name that they recognise, they have a history with that.
22:12 With these boundary changes, there's going to be a lot of voters out there who will be voting for a new person for this time.
22:17 It might not always be the incumbent.
22:19 So we're going to see a lot of pressure on the Conservative MPs around Kent,
22:23 realising that they're going to have to win over brand new voters in a period when polling is not very favourable to Tories.
22:29 It's going to be a difficult fight for a lot of constituencies across Kent.
22:32 Well, yeah, we can see those constituency changes popping up for Medway at the moment.
22:38 We saw that Chatham and Ellsford and Rochester and Stroud will lose around 10% of its current population to go to these new boundaries.
22:48 Gillingham and Raynham will stay the same.
22:51 It's the constituency which you're running in for the Liberal Democrats.
22:56 But when we look at the polls, the two main parties dominating the polls do seem to be Conservative and Labour.
23:02 Does it concern you going into the general election seeing that actually Gillingham and Raynham,
23:08 currently it says that there's a 0% chance of the Liberal Democrats winning that seat?
23:13 I'm not going to lie to you. I'm not going to lie to the voters.
23:16 It's always going to be a difficult struggle.
23:18 But I don't get into politics to look at the winner and the loser.
23:20 It's all about getting into politics, about talking about the issues.
23:23 And I'm proud to stand for Lib Dem. I'm proud to stand for liberal issues in Gillingham and Raynham.
23:27 I'm proud to stand for the people in Gillingham and Raynham, an opportunity to vote for me.
23:31 And if they agree with me, that's brilliant.
23:33 How would we see Gillingham and Raynham change if you were to be elected as MP?
23:38 Well, I think first of all, you will probably notice that my workload will be up when it comes to MP.
23:43 I think Gillingham and Raynham has been ignored by its current MP.
23:47 He's got a bad reputation for not answering emails and not talking to communities.
23:53 So I think at the very least, you'll see an MP who cares about the community, who cares about the people there,
23:58 who's willing to listen to them, who have surgeries pre-announced rather than just turning up for a photo op.
24:03 Well, Raymond Chisley is not here to defend himself,
24:06 but I'm sure he'd say that he tries his best to respond to constituents.
24:11 Looking back at Thanet, Jack, how do you sort of see this panning out in the general election?
24:20 Again, currently Medway only has one Labour MP.
24:24 It's currently blue all across the county, in fact.
24:29 So why do you think it will be any different this time around?
24:32 Conservatives have been in charge for a while. Why is that going to change?
24:38 I think the short answer is let's look at the national swing,
24:42 and look at the last 14 years of the Conservatives' kind of behaviour really in government.
24:48 And I think the last four or five years have really kind of highlighted how much we need a general election sooner rather than later.
24:57 You have the Covid inquiry, which highlighted how poorly the Conservatives acted.
25:03 You've also got the Brexit debacle, regardless of whether you're in or out.
25:07 They haven't delivered on what they said they were going to deliver.
25:10 And certainly the cost of living has gone through the roof.
25:13 We've had energy crisis. We've had housing crisis.
25:16 We've had hospital crisis. We've had NHS crisis. What's next?
25:20 And I certainly think that a general election is needed now more than ever.
25:23 And I certainly think that with the policies that Keir Starmer and his cabinet and the Labour government are coming out with,
25:30 I certainly think that puts us in a really good stead to take the next general election.
25:35 Well, it was interesting speaking to Sir Roger Gale earlier.
25:38 And as I said, we'll hear a little bit more from that chat in Kent tonight after the break.
25:44 But his his main concern was that constituents don't necessarily want these boundary changes.
25:51 But of course, it's something that's recommended, as I said earlier, as the population changes,
25:55 perhaps it's got to sort of be done to reflect the overall population in Kent, which we've seen increase, of course.
26:03 But yeah, just lastly, before we finish. Yeah, Stuart, do you think what do you think about, I guess, the the boundaries changing?
26:10 Do you share that same thought of Sir Roger Gale that perhaps we don't need these changes?
26:17 I think we do need changes. You always need to update population changes all the time.
26:22 People moving out of areas. If we hadn't make any changes, there'd be no MPs in Manchester, you know, exactly.
26:29 So I think you need to educate people about them to make sure they're aware of them and have a fair process.
26:34 I'm always concerned about any of these boundary changes.
26:38 You make sure there's no gerrymandering happening from the government.
26:41 There are suspicions out of fact that Wales have got less MPs and Scotland's got less MPs,
26:46 but somehow the blue wall areas have got more MPs.
26:49 There's always a big question mark. We're out of time, Stuart. Interesting discussion.
26:52 Thank you to you both for joining us. See you for Kent tonight straight after the break. Good night.
26:56 Good night.
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