Next month cabinet members will vote on whether to go ahead with selling the mills or not.
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00:00 Cranbrook volunteers are continuing their fight to keep their windmill up
00:04 and running after Kent County Council said they could be selling all eight of
00:09 the county's mills. They're hoping this could help balance their shortfall of
00:13 86 million pounds. The public consultation into this decision has now
00:19 closed. It received more than 2,000 responses. You only have to look around
00:25 the streets and you'll see the logo of the windmill on the primary school, on
00:31 the estate agents, on the bakery. It's an integral part of what Cranbrook is all
00:36 about. The loss of it could be absolutely appalling. And it's also really good for
00:41 our local economy. We get lots of visitors come in that want to find
00:45 somewhere to have a cup of coffee afterwards so we send them to the town
00:48 so it's going to have a huge impact on that as well. Windmills are a bit like old
00:52 friends. Once you've lost them you can't get new old friends. The thing that
00:58 really makes it worthwhile to me is when I bring the visitors round is the smiles.
01:05 KCC should be proud of what they've done over the years. To lose that now it would
01:11 really impact on how people feel at the county. In the past five years the mills
01:17 have cost KCC around £889,000. That's around £178,000 a year. And when you
01:26 divide that between the eight mills they're each costing KCC around £22,000
01:32 a year. I personally am dead against the County Council getting rid of these
01:37 windmills. I think they're part of Kent's heritage because one of the
01:41 things we've seen is how quickly these buildings will deteriorate if they're
01:45 not maintained. And that's the fear that we have. They're going to private hands,
01:50 the people then can't afford to maintain them and they become very quickly
01:54 instead of a wonderful asset on the skyline they become an eyesore. This is
02:00 the condition the windmill was in before it got handed over to KCC and they were
02:04 able to renovate it into how it's currently looking now. But this is the
02:08 concern to locals. They fear if the council sells off its windmills this
02:12 could be looking more similar to this in the next few years. Now it is grade one
02:17 listed that means by law they have to keep it in good condition so that would
02:23 be my greatest fear that over time the windmills would just basically rot away
02:32 as so many have. KCC say officers are currently reviewing the more than 2,000
02:38 responses received for the consultation. They say no decision will be made until
02:42 the analysis is presented at the upcoming Cabinet Committee. Sophia Aitken
02:47 for KMTV in Cranbrook.