Kent's 3 Likely New Councils

Kent County Council's Reform UK leader has issued a report favouring the county being divided into three new large unitary authorities.

This follows the Labour government's decision to force through changes to local government, which would mean the abolition of the county’s existing 14 councils.

The report from Council leader Linden Kemkaran will go to the newly-established Devolution and Local Government Reorganisation cabinet committee on Monday (July 28).

KCC prefers an option where North would comprise Dartford, Gravesham, Medway and Swale.

West would be Maidstone, Sevenoaks, Tonbridge and Malling and Tunbridge Wells.

While East  would be the current Ashford, Canterbury, Dover, Folkesone & Hythe and Thanet district council areas.

Cllr Kemkaran’s report says the preferred option “best fulfils” the government’s requirements of a minimum 500,000 population size.

North would have an estimated population of 663,000, west 551,000 and east 661,000.

This model would create “the most equitable income scenario” for Kent and Medway, in terms of council tax yield, and deliver “high quality and sustainable” public services.

It would also hope the new clusters’ component councils would have a “good alignment” with “established identities and ways of living”.

The new system would be able to support the creation of the office of an elected mayor, sitting above the unitaries.

The local government minister Jim McMahon has given Kent until November 28 to submit its final set of proposals, which will have to be agreed by the leaders of the existing authorities.

Mr McMahon is expected to deliver his verdict between May and August next year. Elections to a “shadow” unitary would take place in May 2027 and the new authorities would go “live” by April 2028.

The government hopes the new unitaries will make decision making quicker, be cheaper and more efficient.

Earlier this month, Cllr Kemkaran, of Reform UK, said she has already “pushed back” against Whitehall’s council reforms, asking local government minister Jim McMahon for a four-month extension to the November deadline.

He delivered a “hard no”, said the leader.

Cllr Kemkaran added:“Naturally if something is going to be done to you as a county, you want to have some say in how that is done.

“I think for us to refuse to co-operate would be very foolish in the short term but long term, I keep hoping the government will realise that local government reorganisation will probably not give them the power they hoped it would when they introduced it.

“It could be that they carve Kent up into three unitary authorities. Each of those could come under Reform control quite easily and with devolution we could get a Kentish mayor and that could easily be a Reform person. Does the government want to give Reform even more power?”

Her leader Nigel Farage, on a visit to Maidstone on July 7, said the issue of local government reorganisation should be put to a referendum.

He added: “I just think that with an historic county like Kent, people have a very strong county identity. If you told them KCC was to go, to be broken up into three or four or five unitaries, I think they would ask real questions why that’s happening. We should fight this tooth and nail. It’s absolutely insane.”

Green Party leader of Maidstone Borough Council, Cllr Stuart Jeffery, said KCC’s analysis was broadly in line with his.

A study by management consultants Pricewaterhousecoopers (PwC) three months ago was in favour of three unitaries in Kent.

Cllr Jeffery said: “I am very comfortable that the KCC scoring is in accordance with PwC.”