Drainage works on the A225

Drainage work is set to be carried out on the A225 between Shoreham and Eynsford tonight. Recent bouts of heavy rainfall have led to flooding and dangerous amounts of water in several places on the carriageway, in particular by the railway bridge near Preston Farm. 

Contractors did undertake works pre Christmas (21 December) but these did not deliver the desired result, and so Kent Highways drainage officers have required more works. At least two of the key sites are being worked on tonight, and I will update when I have further information.

Councillor Cameron Beart

This morning I got the awful news that Cameron Beart, Kent County Councillor for Sheppey, had died suddenly. He was 31. 

Cameron was elected to the County Council in May 2021. He was utterly rooted in the Island, and deeply proud of it. He also served on Swale Borough Council and was Deputy Mayor at Queensborough Town Council.

He was deeply concerned to boost educational opportunities for young people on Sheppey and was a constant and strong community champion - as seen last summer when he and his County Division colleague, Andy Booth, put in a huge effort to support local people when Southern Water’s systems failed and brought huge distress and disruption to residents.

Our statement and tribute from KCC is here. It is hard to fully take in the sudden death of a young man, or to comprehend his family’s grief and loss. That loss is also felt by friends, fellow councillors and the community he was so proud to represent. RIP.

Levelling Up Fund: good news for Kent

This morning the Department of Levelling Up, Homes and Communities (DLUHC) announced awards under round 2 of the Levelling Up Fund - and it was good news for Kent.

As a County Council, KCC was able to submit one bid – and this proved to be very successful. The Dover Access Improvements scheme secured £45 million in funding. This is designed to improve the flow of traffic through the port of Dover, addressing at least part of the problems that have dogged the county for years and currently seem whenever Operation Brock has to be triggered.

The scheme involves extensive reconfiguration and investment in the port of Dover site. In particular, there will be changes to the order of the various border and customs controls, which are currently set on the basis of arrangements of two decades ago and can be much improved.

There will also be an increase in the buffer zone, removing a lot of traffic from the roads, as well as a doubling in the number of border control posts and a new dock exit route. The latter will help particularly with vehicles that have to be turned away, for example because the paperwork has not been completed.

As I have emphasised in a number of interviews today, this is not a silver bullet; there are a number of measures that need to be taken to ensure that our borders operate effectively, and the damage done to communities and businesses in Dover, East Kent and the county as a whole is ended. It is nonetheless a major step forward. There are still some further parts of approval process to be gone through with government, and the scheme will then take a number of years to implement, not least because it will have to be phased while the port and the border systems continue to operate.

Four other schemes across Kent, put forward by District and Borough councils, were successful: in Dover (so doubly good news for the town and district), in Canterbury, in Swale and in Folkestone and Hythe. All told, this represents £123 million in government investment in Kent. 

Although some have criticised awards to sites in London and the Southeast, DLUHC Secretary Michael Gove points out that proportionately more of the fund still goes to areas such as the North West; and, in an interview on the Radio 4 Today Programme this morning, he cited Kent, and the Kent coast in particular, as an example of an area in the Southeast with significant social and economic needs. We agree; in KCC‘s strategic statement, Framing Kent’s Future, our first priority was Levelling Up Kent. Today marks a good start.

You can find the KCC media release about the funding award here.

KCC launches community services consultation

Kent County Council has today (17 January) launched a 10 week consultation  on the future of our community services and buildings. This includes areas such as children’s centres and youth centres, adult education, some public health services and community services for adults with learning difficulties.

This reflects extensive work by KCC to model new ways to deliver these services; this will require fewer buildings, focused where they are most needed, a greater reliance on outreach and in a number of cases co-location of services. The proposals, if enacted,  would deliver - reflecting the severe financial pressures which KCC is experiencing - savings of some £6 million, though this comes after reinvestment of £4 million in improved outreach. The proposals also aim to tackle the unsustainable maintenance backlog on the KCC community estate, much of which is open for only a limited number of hours per week.

The consultation, which includes drop-in events, runs until 26 March. The details, including the link to the consultation, are set out in this KCC media release. 

From 2022 to 2023

I am conscious that, for a time in October-November, I posted relatively little. This was not because there was little going on, but that there was so much happening that I fell behind on posting.

2022 has been a turbulent year for us in Kent, as it has nationally and worldwide - and the effects of many of those global factors, ranging from weather extremes to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, have been felt in the county. I have sought to reflect this, and to look forward, in a New Year message published today. 

Looking back twelve months, it is striking how much my (and many others’) hopes that we could move towards recovery and long-term planning in 2022 were confounded. The economic overhang of pandemic and lockdown, followed by the price shocks resulting from the Ukraine war, have seen to that. This has been felt in many ways; to take an example, the intense pressures on the bus network, which dominated the summer and caused so much anxiety to families across the county, reflected a combination of fuel (and other) price increases, driver shortages and a fall in usage that took place in the pandemic and has not been reversed. 

One result is that our budget pressures this year have been far more intense than in the past, and even with a big effort in the closing months of the financial year, we are likely to see a substantial overspend for 2022-23. That adds to our challenges in setting the budget for 2023-24 (which we will bring forward at the start of January). In the joint letter that the Leader of Hampshire County Council and I sent to ministers in October, we highlighted the long-term structural problems of local government finance, above all in relation to social care and children’s services; it is the combination of that with the year’s economic upheavals that made 2022 so difficult.

At KCC, we saw significant setbacks and shortfalls during the year, notably the failings in SEND transport in February and - also in the SEND area - a highly critical Ofsted/ CQC revisit in the autumn. Addressing these shortcomings remains a major focus for us. Yet there were also very positive developments. Ofsted rated our children’s services Outstanding; the innovative Reconnect programme, focused on opportunities for children and young people in the aftermath of the pandemic, came to a successful conclusion; people across the county responded magnificently to the plight of Ukrainian refugees, and KCC and its partners played a strong part in that; and we saw the beginnings of a positive partnership in health and care as the Integrated Care System for Kent and Medway got under way.

As we go into 2023, it will be through boldness and in breaking new ground, as through our joint work with the NHS and the opportunities of the government’s devolution programme, that we can seek solutions to the challenges we confront. 

With good wishes to everyone in Kent for 2023 as a year of recovery and renewal.

Footway works in Tudor Drive

Footways in Tudor Drive in Otford will be resurfaced with works starting next Tuesday, 3 January. The works are expected to last for around ten weeks and will be undertaken in daytime hours (between 7 am and 5 pm). 

Some concerns have been raised with me as to whether this would make the footway more slippery in winter conditions, and also whether these works should be a high priority at a time when money for highways works (and much else) is tight. 

On the first point, Kent Highways officers are categorical that the surface will not be more slippery than the current concrete slabs (if anything, the aggregate in the asphalt should give a better grip). 

Regarding the second concern, the works are linked to the Highways Asset Management Programme, which is a comprehensive assessment of the condition of highways assets (not just roads but bridges, structures, drainage etc.) across the county. Kent Highways is now spending a great deal more on asset (and in particular footway) preservation as opposed to the more expensive renewal; if works to preserve footways are undertaken at quite an early stage then the life of the asset can be extended, perhaps by decades, avoiding future deterioration and the need for it to be renewed at greater cost. It was with this in mind that Tudor Drive was put forward by the local highways team and validated by our pavement engineers. 

Hopefully disruption can be minimised in the course of these works (there should always be accessible footway on the other side of the road when a section is being worked on) and they will deliver a lasting benefit.

Wested Lane closure delayed again

The closure of Wested Lane for Network Rail works (already postponed once in the days leading up to the late Queen Elizabeth II's funeral), due to start this morning (14 December) has been postponed once more. This reflected the current rail strikes and the runup to the Christmas period (though presumably the former was the key factor). So far no new date has been given.