East Thanet MP Polly Billington has accused the Reform Leader of Kent County Council of trying to use ‘dodgy figures’ and ‘evasion tactics’ after claims – which were later dismissed by Cllr Linden Kemkaran- that the party plans to raise council tax by the maximum allowed of 5%.
In a letter to KCC Council Leader Linden Kemkaran, the MP said: “Reform promised during their county council election campaign to introduce a ‘DOGE for Kent’ modelled on Elon Musk’s state-slashing bonanza in the United States.
“The promise made by Reform was that by making unspecified ‘efficiency savings’, Kent taxpayers would be spared further tax increases. I am therefore frustrated to have read that the council you lead has made few meaningful savings since entering office earlier this year and is instead planning to raise council tax by the maximum possible amount of 5%.
“In my view, to do so would be a huge betrayal of those you promised to protect from tax rises, when it is quite clear Reform in Kent simply didn’t have a plan for how such a pledge could be kept.”
Her letter comes on the heels of a Financial Times report claiming that Reform in Kent were planning the council tax hike.
However, Cllr Kemkaram has since said in an interview with BBC Kent that discussions over council tax for 2026/27 would not take place until November at the earliest.
In the interview she said: “When I came into office I was very clear, I would not be speculating too early on about whether the council tax would have to go up or not… It would be completely irresponsible of me to tell you now.”
Ms Billington’s letter also focused on a claim made by Cllr Kemkaram at a full council meeting on 10 July, where she said Reform had found savings of nearly £40 million by “scrapping the net zero renewable energy programme” and the “transitioning of the KCC vehicle fleet to electric vehicles”.
The East Thanet MP, who has a background in energy policy, said that she found “this claim to be highly suspicious and potentially misleading, given that energy efficiency programmes and upgrading to electric vehicles nearly always deliver strong returns on investment when it comes to cutting energy and fuel bills.”
In response to a Freedom of Information request submitted by the MP, Kent County Council said: “None of the projects in the Potential Capital Projects section have completed business cases. These projects are very high level and would only go ahead once business cases have been worked up and approved, and when affordable funding solutions have been identified.
“Therefore, removal of these projects from the potential list is a future cost avoidance exercise.”
Ms Billington says the council has declined to provide documentation to show scrapping the projects had saved Kent taxpayers nearly £40 million and so she has now submitted a request for a formal review.
Polly Billington is the last person who should be accusing others of “betrayal”.
Agreed
Reform in Thanet lied in may elections leaflets and hopefully like ukip they will disappear quickly
Mr Lewis – The biggest liars were National Labour Party! Once again, they have wrecked our country’s finances but in record time!
National labour finished in 1945 when the last of those who supported Ramsey MacDonald in 1931 lost their seats.
As for wrecking the national finances where’s the beef! You don’t like what they are doing? Fine, but wrecking,I think you need a bit of perspective.
Mr Nokes – you know full well I was referring to UK Labour Party.your beloved Labour Party are destroying UK but your too blinkered to see it. However, you believe whatever you wish
Did you forget all the electioneering where they said it’d take a year or two to fix the absolute shambles the Tories left us in?
Have you also ignored all the good they’ve done so far?
What’s that, you didn’t know they’d done good, solid policy…I wonder why…
Because they haven’t. “… all the good they’ve done so far..”such as murdering 4000 pensioners as soon as they got into power? Politicizing the police and the judges? Presiding over an increase in illegal immigrants? A rise in crime? Rises in taxes, inflation, and energy bills? Look at the polls and bye-election results, seems to me that NO ONE (except you) believes such a claim.
The first thing Reform did on taking office was to haul down the Ukranian flag.
How much money did that save?
Andrew – how much money has been ‘washed’ out of the UK to a dubious and corrupt Ukrainian administration with puppet Zelenskyy, with no public consent? The Ukrainian flag waving virtue signalling is getting to the end of its days as the official narrative falls apart and the Western war mongers are exposed. And Ukrainian opponents of multi-mansion owning Zelensky make their voices heard.
cyka blyat, polezny durak
Gosh, “not impressed”! Strong language there! But you’re right, if referring to “Democrat”.
”Western war mongers”? Wasn’t it Rusia that started the war?
Oh the irony from Labour who promised hundreds of pounds off energy bills. Doubly ironic as Polly was assistant to Ed Milliband.
And wait for November’s budget which will no doubt include covert tax rises.
And by how much will KCC council tax fall?
Wait and see!
Reform voters all have one thing in common they are thick and easily lead by con artists.
I would much rather believe what Badenoch says than lieing Farage.
It’s ironic Bill that you call people thick when you can’t spell, perhaps you should look in the mirror to see who is thick.
Dyslexia is a disability, not a lack of intelligence. Someone intelligent would’ve clocked that before being ableist.
Hi Paul, why are you behaving in such a manner? What exactly do you hope to achieve, besides telling us exactly who you are at your core?
How do you know the poster is dyslexic?
its led not lead thicko
They are homophones arn’t they Mick? I cannot understand how cutting staff at KCC can make a department “efficient” anyone any ideas?
Why doesn’t everyone calm down.When Reform announce their budget plans and set their precept, then it’s time to deconstruct their budget.
My guess is that far from being a wonderful piece of financial wizardry, it will be the same old charge more for less deal.The same problems that beset the tories, will remain for the turquoise tories.
It’s Polly who needs to calm down – though of course she likes to pretend to kick up a fuss over something once a month, so that she can pretend she’s working hard for Thanet.
Yes that’s what I said,and so should everyone else.
The economy won’t improve until everyone stops thinking they are exceptional and insists on receiving more money.
We need to concentrate as I keep saying on social housing,education, and better public transport. The green energy revolution needs to redouble and get those energy prices down ,because relying on gas is never going to reduce those prices.
Relying on gas would bring down prices. The cost of electricity produced by gas is artificially high not solely because of wholesale gas prices but because the capital and operating costs of the gas generation infrastructure needs to be spread over an ever diminishing number of units of electricity produced.
But we need that standby generation because renewables are intermittent. Endlessly saying renewables produce cheap electricity is pointless, it may be cheap when it leaves the turbine or solar panel, but the associated grid investment ( for such distributed generation) the increased cost of balancing the grid and as above having available standby generation means that the actual price paid by time it boils my kettle is extortionate. The notion that spending countless billions more on short term storage is another nonsense which will never cover its costs.
Then we have the likes of the woodburning generation at sandwich with its endless numbers of lorry deliveries of fuel from all over the country, at one point it was coming from mid wales, what’s the carbon footprint of such logs delivered 25 tonnes at a time by a diesel engined lorry? That then returns empty for another load.
In the meantime , businesses are failing at an alarming rate and households falling into debt ( which is added to the bills of those of us that do pay) , there’s no joined up thinking anywhere.
East Thanet. The rest of the isle and beyond are stuck with the old dinosaur, from whom we hear very little.
You have much more chance of a reply if you write to him, which is probably why he’s won every election in 42 years. Can’t see Poll doing that… can you?
Would Pollys time not be better spent trying to ensure that labour improve the economy and country. Rather than waste time on daft attempts at childish political point scoring.
Most of us are going to be worse off under this government and I’d be very surprised if labour had control of KCC that our council tax would be any less than under Reform.
You’d think everything was rosy and there was nothing else to do.
Did you also forget Starmer said the first few years would be tough due to having to fix all the tories messes?
Not at all, however like many i expect to be way worse off than Starmers utterances would suggest. Labour will do what labour always has, tax and spend to the extreme, it’s just going to be worse this time round because the tax burden was already high.
That they can’t see that we’re already living way betond our means but have no intention of doing anything about it is the real failing.
Oh, what a shame you’re not with objective reality, proffering a subjective version. That is kinda sad, but you’re entitled to it.
We only have to wait and see, they’ve still got best part of 4 years to run the country totally into the ground. The NI changes and energy prices are killing industry and jobs quite fast enough as it is without further reducing demand by the inevitable tax increases in november.
How do you see things being turned around?
I think Polly Billington should be called Ms Billington by people who are not a personal friend of hers.
“… a background in energy policy…”?
Sitting around tables in air conditioned offices, in crisp ironed clothes, sifting through reams of paper and expelling hot air?
She can’t have a background in energy policy, because such things occur in government and she is not now, not has she ever been in government. In fact, her resume indicates that she has never had a job role in her entire life that adds to the common wealth. The same Avery other sitting Labour M.P. None of them has worked other than the Tertiary Sector.
Labour doing ok and done some good work but it does take time to clear up the mess they were left in .
As for reform – they don’t really have policies . Their agenda is to simply to point out all the things people are unhappy about and keep reminding people those things still exist… No real practical solutions
Who the hell is polly Billington and what is she doing for east Kent, you never see her at prime minister questions and she has never knocked on my door when campaigning as far as I can make out there don’t seem to be any improvements in the East Kent area other than a lot of houses being built that nobody can afford
I mean, you see her plenty a few rows behind starmer at PMQ’s, but go off.
There is none so blind as the wilfully ignorant…
A Labour MP telling lies in order to smear Reform wow who could have guessed ? The same Labour party that said “not a penny on council tax” then raised council tax, Labour said “your energy bills will be £300 a year cheaper” bills have gone up 4 times under Labour and are 12% higher since Labour got into government, Labour have a proven track record of bare-faced lying to the electorate so why would anyone give creadence to anything Polly Billington says especially about council tax rises when the discussions on council tax have’nt even taken place yet !!
I voted for Labour because they promised to reduce bus fares. What happened? Maximum fares immediately increased by 50%!
Not actually in Thanet to!
She’s supplies the refreshments for the Labour cabinet often referred as Poly put the kettle on.
Plumbob- I doubt it. By the way, her name is Polly, not Poly.
Here we go again, grandads army of trolls banging on about Polly or any women not dressed in turquoise. As I said Polly,Checksfield, plumbing,not impressed, graham emery ( any relation to Dick) etc etc, should see what KCC offers up as a budget next March,when we see the cut of their jib.
It’s bad enough to hear the tories beating up on benefit claimants to fund stamp duty cuts that will benefit millionaires more than anyone else, without all this nonsense.
I didn’t see you jumping to Amelia Randall’s defence on here, despite her receiving far harsher criticism. So stop making out you care about women when it is only your beloved LABOUR women that you care about.
Randall is a quackery believing crank. Anyone who’s mentally disturbed enough to think they can talk to the dead and who thinks they can change reality by doing “candle magick”, doesn’t deserve any level of being taken seriously. They deserve therapy.
I’m sure you know all about quackery and therapy. Keep taking the tablets.
We are 6th richest country in the world, its the way money is hoarded by the billionaires that causes poverty
What’s that got to do with verbally abusing a female politician?
Oh come on! How could you be failed to be seduced by the sexy Dame Andrea Jenkins singing on stage at the reform party conference.OMG grrrrrrrrrr ❤️❤️👌
People blaming 14 months of Labour government for the 14 years of mismanagement of the Con-servation Party….
Really looking forward to the council tax increases that Reform promised would never do…
Reminds me of the ‘Brexit will mean cheaper food, clothing, and shoes’
They’re all effing liars.
No one is blaming labour for the economy they inherited, but they were elected to put things on the right track , not make things worse, they’ve got a bit under 4 years to make substantive changes , but how many people have confidence in what is happening?
No one has even said how sexy Dame Andrea Jenkins is in reform apart from me!
Worth a vote just for her alone 😉😄
I very much look forward to Thanet Council leading by example and not increasing their share of Council Tax at all next year.
Well done Polly !
Anyone knows when the Office for Friendship with Russia opens in Thanet? I hear its a key policy of Reform
I’m sure the left would approve. They never march in support of Ukraine… only the middle east.