Catch up on the latest political news from across Kent with Oliver Leader de Saxe, joined by Independent Swale Borough Councillor KCC councillor Mike Whiting and Green KCC and TMBC councillor Mark Wood.
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00:00Hello and welcome to the Kent Politics Show live here on KMTV, the show that gets Kent's
00:26politicians talking. I'm Oliver, Leader of the Saks, and this week it's all about cuts.
00:32Cuts to buses, potential cuts to town councils, budget cuts, cutting back on anti-social behaviour,
00:37the lot. With devolution now in the middle distance for the county, and our local authorities
00:42increasingly cash-strapped, what is the pathway forward? Well to make sense of it all, I'm
00:48joined by Councillor Mike Whiting, Independent Kent County Councillor and Swell Borough Councillor,
00:53and Tunbridge and Morling and KCC Councillor Mark Hood. But first, buses are a lifeline
00:59for thousands here in Kent. But ask passengers and they'll tell you services aren't what
01:04they used to be. Bus companies blame rising costs and fewer passengers, while councils
01:10say they can't afford to subsidise every route. Arles Sheppey resident Sylvia Jell is 91 years
01:17old. It's one of many from across the county who fear they could be isolated if services
01:22disappear.
01:23There's nothing helping people on the island. It's just going downhill. And they're not
01:34looking after what the people want, you know. At my age, and a lot of other people, elderly,
01:41it's too tiring.
01:42That's Sylvia, she's great.
01:44Well, so Mike, you actually do know Sylvia quite well. I think you've spoken to her before
01:50about this very issue, because this is an issue that affects both of your areas that
01:54you represent. Buses are a huge issue for most parts of the county. What have you been
01:59hearing from residents like Sylvia?
02:01Well, it's exactly what she said. They're able, perhaps, if they're lucky, to be able
02:06to get a bus to where they want to go. But very often, the bus service will stop midway
02:12through the afternoon, mainly so that the buses can be diverted to school runs, which
02:17means she can't get home. So poor Sylvia, she gets a bus into town, into Sheerness where
02:22she does her shopping once a week, and it costs her £10 then to get a taxi home. And
02:27some people simply can't afford a £10 taxi journey just to do their shopping.
02:32Because it's expensive, especially for people on pensions who are from low-income backgrounds.
02:37I want to ask you, Mark, obviously, Tunbridge and Moorling is particularly rural. We've
02:42heard about this rural isolation for rural communities. Is it a similar story where you're
02:47based in the county?
02:48Well, in Tunbridge, we have a subsidised bus service within the town, the 211, which is
02:53paid for by Kent County Council. So we're always worried about that losing its funding.
02:58The rural areas have particular challenges. But it's not just rural areas, because people
03:02want to be able to use the bus to be able to get to the railway station in order to
03:06commute into London every day. However, they're less inclined to do so if they're worried
03:12that the buses won't be there to bring them home. You can get to the bus station, but
03:16you need to have the buses running later into the evening in order to be able to rely
03:20on them. So people are still having to drive in, which is obviously not what we want.
03:25And we hear a lot about subsidising buses. But Councillor Neil Baker, who runs a lot
03:31of the transport stuff as part of KCC, contends the cash mostly goes to pay for school routes.
03:38Do you think there's any kind of a reorganisation of priorities within Kent County Council for
03:43working people, for elderly people, for those communities that are struggling with these
03:48bus routes, that can't get those evening services back from places, and perhaps get to places,
03:52but can't get home?
03:53That's right. Absolutely that. And the government has just given KCC £23 million this year
04:00to do what you said, which is to improve and enhance particularly rural bus services. And
04:06again, on Sheppey, I represent people who live on the east of the island, which is a
04:10holiday island at the end of the day. There are no bus services on a Sunday. There are
04:14no bus services on a bank holiday Monday. And what we need to do is try and get some
04:18of that £23 million, and I've asked for this full council a couple of months ago, get that
04:24part of that £23 million at least spent on Sheppey and make a priority so that we haven't
04:30got these isolated communities moving forward.
04:32And what about you, Mark? Do you agree with that point?
04:35Well, I think we've been asking for a Transport for Kent solution for quite a while in the
04:41chamber. The Highland Council up in Scotland, they run their own buses. It's been really
04:46successful. They've managed to cut the amount of money they spend on the private sector.
04:50We know that there's issues with the way that Kent's buses are run. We've got two major
04:56operators who tell us that they can't turn a profit, but when they do turn a profit,
05:01obviously the profits are going to the companies that own them in Germany. So actually it's
05:05the taxpayers there, because those companies are actually nationalised industries. So we
05:11need to step in and do more. And we need to make sure that, yeah, that everybody, we need
05:16to make sure that the children can get to school. But once those buses have been used
05:19for transporting the children to school and before they pick them up again, they can be
05:23used in the community to make sure that people like our residents can get in to use local
05:28services.
05:29Because what you said there is a TFL style solution, which can only really come about
05:34with devolution, which is now in the middle distance. It will happen in the next couple
05:38of years. We don't know when and we don't know the particular details. Are we just kind
05:43of banking on a unicorn to save us with our bus services?
05:46I think we are clearly hoping that we will get those TFL type powers, like the Mayor
05:51of Manchester, for example, and mayors elsewhere in the country are getting. So if we do end
05:57up with a mayoralty in Kent, which seems very likely in a few years, we'll get those
06:01powers. KCC does already have a TFL style service in the Fastlink in Gravesham and Dartford
06:10that serves around the area of the Bluewater Shopping Centre. And in Dover, they're just
06:14starting a new. And this is where they have put in the infrastructure and paid for the
06:19infrastructure and then they tender the service to a bus company to run it on their behalf.
06:25And they are both very successful services. And I think it can be done in Kent. We just
06:30need the powers that allow Kent to expand across the whole county.
06:34But why do you think Dover, Gravesham and Dartford have these services where other parts
06:38of the county don't have them? Do you think there's been, some communities have been forgotten
06:46in this infrastructure investment from KCC?
06:49Well, a lot of the, yeah, and a lot of the investment now has come from development.
06:54So you had the Ebbs Fleet Development Company building that garden city that George Osborne
06:59invented only a few years ago. And now there are thousands of houses in and around the
07:04Bluewater area, straddling the border between Gravesham and Dartford. And it's money from
07:09developments like that that have helped pay for the infrastructure for the fast track
07:13in that area. So yes, it needs a lot of funding, but that funding can come from government,
07:18it can come from local government, or it can come from housing development.
07:22Mark, I want to bring you in here, because I know that you're a big advocate for town
07:25councils. And we'll talk more about this after the break. But a lot of town and parish councils
07:31pull together resources to work with KCC to invest in bus services. With devolution and
07:37local government reorganisation potentially phasing out town councils in a traditional
07:43sense or removing their voice, are you worried that these local services face an existential
07:48threat if these town councils cease to exist in the force that they used to in the past?
07:53Well, I don't think town councils are going to cease to exist. I think the mood music
07:57is that they're going to be given extra powers. So where I live in Tunbridge, we are the only
08:01part of Tunbridge Morning that doesn't have a town or a parish council. So we're in the
08:04process of setting one up. We've just triggered the governance review in order to get a town
08:12council for the first time. And we've just been talking about buses. I don't expect a
08:16town council in Tunbridge to start running its own bus service any time soon, but in
08:19Dover they do and in Sevenoaks they do. And actually parish councils, just north of Tunbridge,
08:25there's a collection of parish councils that have come together and they actually run the
08:29community bus service. So it just shows what can be achieved. I think parish and town councils
08:35have a massive role to play in filling that gap that's going to be created. We're going
08:39to have a democratic deficit unless every town has a town council. And you can see towns
08:44across Kent are all in the process of trying to set up theirs.
08:48I think what's really interesting is obviously we have these small councils, these local
08:52authorities setting their own bus services. And then we hear from Stagecoach's southeast
08:57management director, Joel Mitchell, saying the cost of running a bus has gone up 25%,
09:01that the effects of changes to economic policy and national insurance is going to hit them
09:07really, really hard. And I'm wondering how do we balance this out? Because obviously
09:13we're hearing these providers with these managing directors of these bus companies saying it's
09:18not feasible to run it. Then we're hearing from smaller parish councils and local authorities
09:23saying, oh no, it is perfectly feasible if you band together. So which is it?
09:28Well, it's where the funding comes from, isn't it? And companies like Stagecoach are commercial
09:33organisations and 93 or 95% of the buses in Kent are run on a commercial basis, which
09:39means if they don't make money, they get cut. The problem is when the service diminishes
09:44and we've seen it and fewer and fewer buses are running, fewer and fewer people are encouraged
09:50then to get on the bus and it becomes a bit of a chicken and egg and it becomes a downward
09:53spiral as fewer buses mean fewer passengers, fewer passengers mean fewer buses. So it does
09:59take a public investment, investment of public money, be that through a parish or town council,
10:05be that through a county council or whatever replaces it with a mayoralty or directly from
10:09government to actually make these services viable and run.
10:13I've probably guessed your answer already, Mark, given your party affiliation, but would
10:17you like to see the profit incentive taken out of public infrastructure and running bus
10:22services like this one?
10:23No, not really. It's about sustainability. So what we need is a system where you have
10:29across the whole of Kent, you have a common ticketing system so that you can use all the
10:35different, so if you go out on one service you can use that ticket to come back. We've
10:39got a situation now where operators are refusing to have, they've withdrawn return tickets
10:44so that's driving the prices up. The Labour government has increased the price of the
10:48fares by a third. So we can do so much better, but it's about priming the system, it's about
10:55using the valuable money to prime the system, have services which are fit for purpose and
11:00affordable and then you can boost the number of people that use them and then you get a
11:04sustainable bus industry in Kent and that's what we all want.
11:08Well it's a really interesting topic, we can talk more about it after the break. A lot
11:11of this has been discussed in Gabriel Morris and Simon Finlay's work on buses for the local
11:16democracy reporting service, you can find that all on the Kent online website. But coming
11:20up after the break, new data on active behaviour across Kent, but it's to reflect people's
11:26lived experiences. And with our local councils facing a shake-up, as we've heard a little
11:32bit there, what's the future for parish and town councils who will play a huge role in
11:37representing local communities in bigger unitary authorities. All that and more after the break.
15:03Welcome back to the Kent Politics Show live here on KMTV, the show that gets Kent's politicians
15:10talking. Still joining me are Councillor Mike Whiting, Independent Kent County Councillor
15:16and Swell Borough Councillor and Tunbridge and Moorling and KCC Councillor Mark Hood.
15:21Now, it's a big issue across the entirety of Kent, but reports of anti-social behaviour
15:26have dropped in the county. But for many towns, it doesn't quite feel that way. The latest
15:31statistics reveal around 15,649 reports were made to the force in 2024, which is 8% down
15:39on the previous year, with Tunbridge and Moorling seeing the biggest drop of all the local
15:43authorities. But from Cliftonville to Thanet and the streets of Sittingbourne, problems
15:49still persist. Well, still joining me is Mark and Mike. And I'll leave it to you on this
15:54one, Mark, because obviously it is a big issue we've seen a lot of. We've also seen Tunbridge
15:59and Moorling Borough Council investing a lot into this. I was out with some of the
16:04security team in Snodland last year who were on the streets tackling anti-social behaviour.
16:09Do you buy that Tunbridge and Moorling is seeing this big decline, that anti-social
16:14behaviour is probably less of an issue in the borough? Well, you can't argue with the
16:18data, but the fact is that the borough councils used shared prosperity funding in order to
16:27pay for that security company. So they've come in and they've enabled the council to
16:35drive down anti-social behaviour in a number of hotspots. But is it the role of a borough
16:41council to supplement what we're spending on Kent Police? We spend a huge amount of
16:45money on the Kent Police precept. But it's working at the moment. How sustainable it
16:52is going forward to keep putting that money into that resource is debatable. I know that
16:56the parish councils are actually paying into that now. So it's an interesting situation.
17:02We've still got anti-social behaviour and my worry, my real concern is that when we
17:08see children's centres being cut and the provision for teenagers at the youth hubs,
17:16the family hubs, being reduced, so you have to turn up with an appointment, that's having
17:21a big impact. I know there's issues at Millmead in Margate and at Seashells on the island
17:27and we need to make sure that those facilities are kept open because they really address
17:33those teenagers. They are the resources that we need to support. It was last week that
17:39I spoke to Richard Palmer, the new reform UK leader at Swale Borough Council of his
17:44group, and he was saying it's all about root causes, it needs to be tackled. And Swale
17:48is an interesting one. There has been a 4.62% drop according to Kent Police data. At the
17:54same time, we've also seen dispersal orders extended in Sittingbourne town centre at the
18:00moment. As someone who's so familiar with the Isle of Sheppey and the wider borough,
18:05what do you make of this? Do you think it is just a vocal minority or do you think the
18:09data may not reflect the lived experience of many people in the area? I think that certainly
18:15the areas I represent on Sheppey, I'm not so sure that the data represents the experiences
18:20of people. We have seen some investment in Sittingbourne and in Sheerness. There's been
18:26Safer Streets money coming from government. But these time-limited grants, they come in
18:31for a year, they enable you to buy an extra police officer, buy an extra PCSO or an extra
18:37community warden for a year, and you buy a few more TV cameras, CCTV, and you may see
18:44crime reduced for a year. But that investment disappears after a year. So it is about a
18:48sustainable investment. But too many people say to me they see the drug dealing going
18:55on in the street corners, they see the shoplifting that continues. And those levels of crime,
19:02I don't think, whatever the data says, in real people's lives, it matters to them, they
19:07see it, and it affects a lot. And it's not just in our big town centres that we see this
19:13antisocial behaviour. We see it in the smaller villages and elsewhere. And so it's all well
19:18and good putting the investment into the big towns like Sheerness and Sittingbourne in
19:22Swale, where I'm from, but we also need to see it in some of our smaller villages and
19:28rural areas, where rural crime is, as we know, I'm not so sure that's on the decrease.
19:33So I'm wondering what you make of that, because what Mike has been implying here is that there
19:38seem to be these black spots, that there's not a joined-up approach to kind of tackle
19:41it wide. It's these big centralised urban areas that tend to get all the support, all
19:45the investment, and it's these kind of blind spots to antisocial behaviour we're seeing
19:50in Kent. Is that something that you would agree with?
19:52Yeah, I think that's definitely the case. I mean, we've had issues where the County
19:57Council has cut the number of community wardens, and that has left some communities like, I
20:02think we've mentioned Snodland, they haven't got a community warden, they won't have a
20:06community warden. And the community wardens are actually a bridge, they're like the eyes
20:10of many agencies, and they do lots of work with young people in communities, old people.
20:18I think they're highly valued. I think those cuts are regretted by members from all sides
20:25of the chamber. But they're going to have real impacts. We need to look, not just at
20:30the budget this year, but actually what's going to happen in the long term.
20:34The community warden service on Sheppey has been rearranged, and in fact they've taken
20:39one out of Sheerness and put one into Coimbra, which is a smaller town on the island. And
20:44that's to be welcomed in Coimbra, but it's certainly not welcomed in Sheerness.
20:48And it's interesting as well, to even look at the outliers that have seen rises, because
20:52they're not necessarily usual suspects already lined up in like geography, Maidstone a 28%
20:58rise, Dartford a 1.76% rise, Folsom and Hyde, 2.7% rise. You have a relatively rural area,
21:07you have a relatively urban area that looks towards London, you have a coastal community.
21:11There doesn't seem to be a real pattern here. And it kind of raises the question, how can
21:15we tackle antisocial behaviour if there isn't really a pattern in how it emerges or seems
21:20to be appearing across the county?
21:22I think Mark touched on it earlier, and I think some of the early interventions are
21:26the ones that work best. And we have seen a massive reduction in youth services in Kent.
21:33I know when one of the children's centres on Sheppey closed last year, the services
21:38for the teenagers were supposed to go to a local library. A year on, not one child has
21:43been seen and not one session has been held. And I think that's a really important question.
21:48How do we get more resources into younger people to help them, give them the tools they
21:54need to avoid getting involved in antisocial behaviour and crime in the future?
22:01I was going to touch on in Part A, but we didn't really have time. And that is the issue
22:06around the heist of development. Because for viewers who are not familiar at home, there's
22:11this development that's been called in by government that is now going to put a huge
22:16amount of cost on Swellborough Council in terms of the planning inquiry into it. The
22:22hopes were that this development would provide new homes and infrastructure. But the cuts
22:27that Swellborough Council has made to fight the legal fees could see playgrounds cut
22:31back on, could see the services you were mentioning, the potentially preventative services for
22:35young people, going away. Is this something that you're worried about, that councils are
22:41having to make choices between fighting things like planning decisions as opposed to investing
22:46in communities?
22:47Yeah, and that particular development, yes, the government called it in. On the day that
22:54she called it in, that evening, Swellborough Council were to have a planning meeting that
23:02would have recommended refusing that planning commission. So yes, it's had to go down.
23:07There will be a cost. I don't know what the cost is. But there will be a cost to Swellborough
23:12Council to fight that against at the planning inquiry. And there will be a public inquiry
23:18now. But you can bet your bottom dollar that the developer would have appealed and put
23:23an appeal in against any decision to refuse. And the council would have had to pay to fight
23:28that appeal anyway. So I'm not sure. And as a bit of good news, on Wednesday night at
23:35the Swellborough Council meeting, we took a decision to reinstate the money to keep
23:41the playgrounds repaired and up and running properly. So we put an extra £100,000 in
23:46the budget to keep the playgrounds going, which is good news.
23:51A bit positive news there for residents. But obviously, Mark, this isn't just an issue
23:54that impacts places like Swale. Do you sometimes feel as a local councillor, you're at loggerheads
23:59with Westminster, where we're having decisions or trying to push for decisions that may go
24:04against their interests, where you're trying to fight for better investments in communities,
24:09where sometimes you feel like they're forcing housing, forcing policies that you may not
24:14necessarily agree with?
24:16Well, look at what's happened since the election. Kevin McKenna's the new MP for Sittingbourne
24:22in the island. And one of the first things he's done is he's basically overridden the
24:28Borough Council and had this called in. How can people have faith in local democracy and
24:33their councillors to make the right decisions in terms of planning if those decisions are
24:38then handed upwards? That's not what devolution is supposed to hand power down to communities,
24:43not concentrate it in even fewer hands. But I'm actually the chair of one of our planning
24:49committees at Tunbridge Malling, and we have very few powers. The government has increased
24:54the level of housing in our borough by 23%. So we've got a huge amount of our borough
25:01is national landscapes, so the old areas of outstanding natural beauty and Greenbelt.
25:08So we've got huge problems about where we're going to put, I think it's about 1,200 houses
25:14a year we're going to have to find space for. And yet, when you look at London, some of
25:19the London boroughs, they're having a reduction.
25:21I'm going to come in quickly before we have to end it, because obviously Kevin McKenna
25:25says that if it had been called in, if it wasn't called in, there could have been enormous
25:30costs if it didn't go through. But the thing I want to kind of come back to, because we've
25:35been discussing it all programme, is town and parish councils. It kind of speaks to
25:39a wider issue here. We were talking about these issues with government not necessarily
25:44understanding local communities. You have an MP who has called in this decision. Do
25:49you think this kind of speaks to an issue where town councils and parish councils, just
25:52to end the programme on a nice circular note, might end up being ignored by local politicians,
25:58that this could kind of speak to that democratic deficit that was mentioned by Mark just now?
26:03I don't think so. I think the town and parish councils will have a much greater role and
26:08a much more important role once devolution happens in Kent. And let's not make any bones
26:13about it, I think it's going to happen. So once that happens, there will be a deficit
26:17because the borough councils, the district councils, will go as they are at the moment.
26:22And we need that local voice. And town and parish councils can create that voice. And
26:29certainly I want to see the whole of Sheppey represented by town and parish councils.
26:34Well, Mark, I would have loved to have brought you in, but we have to go and end the programme.
26:37Now, thank you both for coming in. I'm sure we'll have you back very soon. And more news
26:42and views next week on the Kent Politics Show.
26:58.