Deciding the Journey, if not the Destination

Speaking in the Folkestone and Hythe District council meeting of 19th November on models of Local Government Reorganisation for Kent, Deputy Council Leader Tim Prater made the case for option 3A, with three authorities covering Kent. Tim said:

We’re not the decision makers in this process. So why are we here?

Ultimately we are not in charge of the destination, but we are in charge of the journey. We should focus on getting the best for Folkestone and Hythe residents.

Government will decide the new authority boundaries. Government has set the rules for deciding boundaries, and given us precedent on how those rules will be interpreted through its decisions in Surrey and elsewhere. We’re here to give our opinion: sadly, nothing more.

So lets concentrate on the things that will deliver the best for Folkestone and Hythe residents, and see where that journey takes us.

Folkestone and Hythe residents are best served by devolution.

There is only one prize worth having from any of this. That’s the devolution of the money and decisions affecting Kent currently made in Westminster being given to Kent.

That doesn’t mean Kent gets more money overall. But it does mean decisions for Kent currently being decided by Government on local transport, skills, employment, housing, regeneration, trade, investment, innovation, business support and more being made in Kent.

And for devolution, you need a single COMBINED authority under the rules of Government. 

Kent’s proposal 1A doesn’t allow for that. It means we can’t have the prize. We should rule it out on that basis. Otherwise we are playing the Hunger Games without any chance of a square meal at the end of it.

Folkestone and Hythe residents will be best served by local service delivery.

When we talk about local service delivery, we know what we are talking about. Remember when this authority put our housing into a shared service with other districts? It failed, spectacularly. It took years to get back on track. Just lumping services together may not be the answer. It is certainly the wrong answer at speed.   

So Unitaries should delegate powers around planning, service delivery and local partnerships to area committees who can understand their area. Those area committees need to be local enough to be recognisable to our residents. They need to have enough Councillors to have some hope of representing them. And right now, the best understood boundaries for those area committees would be existing districts. You may change those over time, but it’s a great place to start.

Folkestone and Hythe residents need this to be affordable.

There need to be enough savings that this process doesn’t increase the burden on tax payers, by leaving merger costs that are just never paid off.

KPMG already says that the five unitary model proposed just doesn’t save enough to pay its costs. It should be ruled out on that basis.

And the expected savings of the 4 unitary models make it doubtful that the payback will occur in the lifetime of some in the room, even if you believe the savings KPMG project, which are doubtful at best. Kent residents don’t get the best out of the models with 4 or 5 Unitaries in Kent.

Folkestone and Hythe residents need an authority that will not drown under the weight of our own Social Care.

A larger authority has more chance of that, and we can be explicit in asking Government to recognise that need, now. Fair funding will be needed. They CAN offer special case support, as they have for Woking and Spelthorne debt. They need to do the same where there are special case social care cost needs.

And Folkestone and Hythe residents need continuity and deliverability.

We need to ensure we can deliver services without interruption from day one.

Proposals that cut districts into pieces and even divisions into pieces - hell, in my division even polling districts into pieces - are seeking to do too much. You need to cut district services and contracts into bits, move staff to different employers.

There is simply no time to try to reengineer the political geography of Kent and deliver services with certainty from May 2028.

So that’s the journey.

• Devolution.
• Local Service Delivery.
• Affordability.
• Social Care Support.
• Continuity and deliverability.

And if that’s the journey, we need the model which best suits those goals.

We need the one that best gives synergy with education, health and policing footprints. We need the model that keep reflects regular travel, channel gateway and work and commuting flows.

And that model is 3A. Three authorities covering Kent, but working together. Creating an East Kent authority with our neighbours in Ashford, Canterbury, Dover and Deal and Thanet. And that’s the model I’ll be voting for this evening, and I’d ask you to do so too to send a clear opinion on behalf of Folkestone and Hythe residents to Government.

Tim's colleague, Gary Fuller also supported option 3a. Technical difficulties meant he spoke from memory of what he's planned to say, which was:

I was thinking about LGR when I was doing the school run this morning. I guess that means I need to get a life. But anyway.

LGR reminds me a bit of eat out to help out but being told you can suggest anywhere you want as long as it’s a chicken place, and it sells chicken in buckets, because that’s what Rishi wants. 

Some people get the hint and suggest KFC. Some suggest Slim Chickens, Popeyes, or Chick-Fil-A, which are at least chicken places, so Rishi might go for them if KFC is closed. 

There’s one who suggests ordering in Pie and Mash, of course, completely missing the point but also insisting you eat what you’re given. 

Oh, and one other thing. If you could find a way to eat out that is cheaper than cooking at home from scratch, that would be great. 

It's not much of a choice. It’s not really going to sort out your finances. But at least you get a bargain bucket at the end of it if you’re lucky and you happen to like them. 

In this tortured metaphor, KFC for me is option 3a. Option 3a best meets the criteria set out by the government. 

Each unitary has more than 500,000 people in it, it offers notional cost savings, the council mergers feel logical, and the unitaries integrate well with other services, in East Kent at least.

Speaking of which, here’s some examples of how an East Kent unitary would match with other East Kent organisations.

East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust has hospitals in:

• Canterbury - Kent and Canterbury Hospital (K&C)
• Margate - Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother Hospital (QEQM)
• Ashford - William Harvey Hospital (WHH)
• Dover - Buckland Hospital
• Folkestone - Royal Victoria Hospital
• Whitstable - Estuary View

The East Division of Kent Police has district commanders in:

• Ashford – Chief Inspector Sarah Rivett
• Folkestone and Hythe - Chief Inspector Mark Hedges
• Canterbury – Chief Inspector Dan Carter
• Dover - Temporary Chief Inspector Liz Cokayne-Delves
• Thanet – Chief Inspector Ian Swallow

Stagecoach South East has depots in:

• Canterbury
• Herne Bay
• Thanet
• Ashford
• Dover
• Hastings
• Eastbourne
• Old Romney

East Kent College Group has campuses in:

• EKC Ashford College
• EKC Broadstairs College
• EKC Canterbury College
• EKC Dover College
• EKC Folkestone College
• EKC Sheppey College

Kent’s gateways to the continent are:

• Eurostar (or its potential competitors) at Ebbsfleet and Ashford
• High Speed 1 at Ebbsfleet, Ashford, Folkestone, and Dover
• Le Shuttle at Folkestone
• Sevington Inland Border Facility at Ashford
• The Port of Dover at (checks notes) Dover 

The Confederation of the Cinque Ports include:

• Deal
• Dover (also an original port)
• Faversham
• Folkestone
• Hastings (also an original port)
• Hythe (also an original port)
• Lydd
• Margate
• New Romney (also an original port)
• Ramsgate
• Rye
• Sandwich (also an original port)
• Tenterden
• Winchelsea

We also have all the coastal castles in Kent (run by English Heritage at least), all the Martello Towers, and we keep the Kent bits of the Royal Military Canal in a single authority too. 

I could go on, but the crux of my argument here is that Option 3a, and specifically East Kent, feels like the only sensible option given the constraints we’re working to. It also feels like it creates an East Kent authority that has a recognisable identity and the potential for integrated services, something we can build upon going into the future. 

None of the options deal with the elephant in the room that is a decade-and-a-half of austerity coupled with the looming social care crisis, of course. But we’re being asked to eat chicken here, so I’m going with KFC. Please vote for Option 3a. Also, I’m hungry now.