The new Conservative leader on Kent County Council is Harry Rayner, who represents Malling West division including voters in Hildenborough.
The remaining five Conservatives on the County Council chose their new leader less than a fortnight after being trounced by Reform UK at the elections.
Cllr Rayner, who held the deputy cabinet role for finance in the previous Tory administration, accepts the “electorate has spoken”.
His party was reduced from more than 60 KCC councillors in 2021 to just five. The Liberal Democrats are now the official opposition party with 12 members.
Reform UK, which secured an outright victory with 57 seats – 16 more than required to form an administration – and have selected Linden Kemkaran as their leader.
Cllr Rayner (front right) is pictured here below with the rest of his group – Sarah Hudson, Nigel Williams, Andrew Kennedy and Claudine Russell.
He said: “I am the group leader, but let’s face it is now a pretty small group, no more than a handful.
“Having just left the administration as the party running it, we know what Reform are going to have to do and the scale of the challenge in front of them.
“We will wait and see who is appointed to cabinet roles and how the committee system is set up.
“We’re under no illusions. The electorate has spoken and they have said that they want Reform UK and we have to respect that.
“I think it is also important that we don’t just attack from the word ‘go’, as that has the appearance of sour grapes. We wait and see what is brought forward to ascertain and consider how sound their proposed policies are.”
The Tories lost nearly all of their big names in the election on May 1, not least KCC leader of six years, Roger Gough.
Earlier this year, he was left angered when Kent was not chosen as a “fast track” county to the government’s first phase of devolution and council reorganisation.
It also meant the local government minister Jim McMahon decreed KCC should hold its election, unlike others in Sussex and Surrey which were shelved.
MARTIN WEBBER WRITES:
The Conservative Party website gives more details of Harry Rayner's experience in politics in West Kent, explaining that Harry was first elected as County Councillor for Malling West in 2017 and reelected in 2021 and 2025.
He has lived in Wrotham for the past 38 years and has been active in local government since 1985 either as a Parish or Tonbridge & Malling Borough Councillor, with a strong record as a vigorous countryside campaigner.
As Chairman of the Tonbridge & Malling District Committee of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England 2009-2014 Harry Rayner jointly lead the campaign to protect the Green Belt from encroachment by a huge block works.
More recently according to the Conservative Party website, he lead the successful campaign by the Combined Malling West Parish Councils, to stop a sub-standard Tonbridge & Malling Borough Council Draft Local Plan, creating a huge built development (Borough Green Gardens) on the Green Belt and in the Kent Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
He continues to campaign vigorously for a full local motorway interchange with the M25 in the vicinity of Junction five to greatly improve the quality of life for the residents of Borough Green, Ightham and St Mary’s Platt by providing relief from existing heavy traffic, particularly HGVs, along the A25 through these villages.
Now retired, Harry Rayner previously worked as a shipowner, freight contractor and ship broker with offices in Kent and London.
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