An Independent candidate has announced her bid to be elected to the Cliftonville division seat at Kent County Council in next month’s by-election.
Lucy Gray runs The Green Kitchen in Northdown Road, Cliftonville, which aims to supports low income households and tackle food poverty. The food and education venture focuses on healthy eating, wellbeing and climate change.
Lucy is a lawyer by profession and has 20 years of experience supporting improvements in housing, education and youth work.
She has previously offered housing advice to Crisis, Shelter and Canning Town CAB and is also a qualified teacher with experience in primary through to adult education.
Lucy says her pledge is to secure increased funding for housing, education, employment and transport and to make sure KCC and TDC account openly and transparently for their spending in the division.
She says she aims to ensure the district council meets affordable housing targets, negotiate with businesses to increase the number of apprenticeships within the education system, leading to work opportunities; help to boost the local economy by working with businesses to showcase the best of Thanet and engage in the tender and contracting process for road maintenance and bus services.
Lucy said: “ I have been working in Cliftonville for three years – a wonderful community with beautiful architecture which has not been cared for or invested in for many years.
“The business and my customers experienced extreme antisocial behaviour for 10 weeks in 2025.
“No Thanet council officials or councillors attended until after the drug taking and defecating in the street stopped.
“I have seen no positive improvement or change. I feel no-one cares but I care.”
Follow Lucy’s work & campaign on Facebook @thegreenkitchencliftonville
The KCC Cliftonville division seat is vacant after the former councillor Daniel Taylor was jailed for 12 months for coercive behaviour towards his wife.
Taylor had been elected with 40% of the vote as part of the Reform landslide last May when it took 57 or the 81 seats at County Hall.
He was kicked out of the party after his arrest came to light but continued in his role as an Independent until he was convicted.
The April 9 poll will be run by Thanet District Council.
Another Leftist parachuting in from Das Kapital!
Which will split the Left’s vote even more.
This is all getting a bit Monty Python now.🤣🤪
How has she been parachuted in? There is an article on this website quoting her from 2023-she may not have been here for decades, but not a parachute in job like Polly or Pervy Bone’s wife were for the 2024 general election.
She is anti-homeless. She has made lots of odious comments about them in the past. She also tried to blame TDC and Police for having to cancel an event at Half Term when in reality she didn’t have the staff to do it. Cannot be trusted.
From what I can see she started a petition about the Cliftonville homeless street defecators harassing people in shops & at cashpoints, dropping drug needles etc that Polly, TDC & the police were all ignoring/passing the buck back & forth until she did & it started getting publicity-hardly anti homeless or odious.
No no no … this is not normal behaviour …our community does not feel safe.
Any person, adult or child, walking down or shopping on Northdown Road has been increasingly affected by incidents of:
• Public defecation and urination, creating health hazards.
• Open drug use, endangering residents and visitors.
• Aggressive and intimidating behaviour, making public spaces unsafe.
• Persistent fly-tipping, damaging the environment and attracting vermin.
The antisocial behaviour of rough sleepers in Cliftonville, Margate have made parts of our community including children and vulnerable households unsafe, unhygienic, and unwelcoming for residents, businesses, and visitors. While we recognise the complex issues surrounding homelessness and addiction, urgent steps must be taken to ensure that public spaces remain safe for everyone.
People don’t want to come to Cliftonville to visit or shop, affecting local businesses who are already struggling.
Cliftonville & Thanet residents feel unsafe and do not want to shop locally.
If no action continues there will be a loss of an already declining high street which has had no to little investment from TDC & a complete loss of community cohesion due to fear, intimation and mistrust of authority.
Health inequalities are further aggravated & put in decline in an area which has a life expectancy 11 years less than other areas of the UK.
Immediate action needs to be taken now to remove these lawless vigilantes, and to restore public safety & dignity.
lucy gray
Petition Starter
She is only concerned about things that mildly affect her by weaponising local issues that suit her needs. Like when she cancelled a half term event because Northdown Road ‘wasn’t safe’ when in reality she didn’t have the staff to run it. She blamed everyone and their mother for this. She even used pictures of crying Ukrainian children in her post. This was posted on local community groups but it backfired when the public saw through it and challenged her. Hopefully people still remember this and won’t vote for her. Cannot be trusted.
I’d vote for her over:
A former Tory who is now anti-Tory.
A former Labour who is now anti-Labour.
A Labour who won’t publicly reveal if she agrees with her own party’s proposed changes to immigration rules.
Very good summary. A true chameleon election if there ever was one.
I thought I would just point out a few home truths for Lucy and readers regarding the ASB that Edgar Road/Northdown Road experienced in 2025. Lucy claims: “The business and my customers experienced extreme antisocial behaviour for 10 weeks in 2025. No Thanet council officials or councillors attended until after the drug taking and defecating in the street stopped. I have seen no positive improvement or change. I feel no-one cares but I care.”
The truth is far different. Following reports by residents of ASB mainly in Edgar Road and outside St Paul’s Church I attended a TDC meeting with Police, Housing Officers and Edgar Road residents on 13th February 2025. I met with Edgar Road residents again on 3rd March 2025. A Police surgery was arranged on 28th April in St Paul’s Church to discuss how Police and TDC Community Safety can resolve ASB issues. Lucy Gray failed to show up for this event.
The Police assured residents and Councillers they were taking extra steps including more officers, dispersal orders and sometimes arrests to improve the situation and asked for time for things to improve. I attended a further meeting on September 19th arranged by the Police and East Thanet MP Polly Billington and it was clear that many improvements had occurred. I know this as I actually live in Cliftonville West.
Have they all gone now then?
Interesting that you only got involved the day after the report on this website, despite it having been going on for some time by that point-before it finally made the news. Emergency PR meeting was it?
Allegedly with the female ward councillor Heather No So Keen denying all knowledge of it, Gauche caviar Polly ignoring correspondence-a familiar theme since she took office, as everything not praising her seems to get magically lost in the post & interwebs universe before it reaches her office/e-mail box & interferes with her art gallery visits & free champers & grub at such & the police & TDC playing a pass the parcel game, the police refusing to do anything & TDC refusing to clean up the mess until the police did, until it got publicity-at which point of course as always as soon as there is press coverage all concerned suddenly got on the same page, stopped their buck passing inertia & went into action.
One would hope with TDC & the police having actually done something about it after the bad publicity that things would be a lot better six months later!
Thankfully Liebour TDC have now learned their lesson-when there is anti-social behaviour at Cecil Square, rather than deal with it as they are paid to do, the police just tell TDC to punish the majority of people (often elderly) sitting down peacefully by removing the benches & TDC does so. Or they try to close shops down to punish the community, while providing no evidence of anti-social behaviour at court-Rick Everitt God Complex maybe & get refused.
https://theisleofthanetnews.com/2025/02/12/northdown-road-traders-appeal-for-action-over-safety-fears-and-customers-driven-away-by-aggressive-begging-and-people-defecating-in-street/
https://theisleofthanetnews.com/2025/03/11/arrests-made-as-police-tackle-antisocial-behaviour-in-northdown-road-cliftonville/
Yes, you attended a meeting the day after Kathy posted the story here & other local news websites reported on it as well-the problem had been going on for some time by then. You would have thought people defecating & urinating all over your area, harassing people, taking drugs etc & destroying trade & making residents lives a nightmare would have been the top priority for all three ward councillors in Northdown West-one who apparently said she knew nothing about it & Polly from day one of it-but apparently not, as usual it is the bad publicity PR response-the same one where people are ignored by slum landlords for months or years about mould, leaks etc then they get on ITV News about its & the landlords magically have workers round to fix things that night, or the next morning.
Maybe she didn’t attend the meeting in late April, because in the first half of March it was reported here & elsewhere that the buck passing between TDC & the police had ended due to the bad publicity, police had finally started doing something by having a presence, arresting people, using orders to move them on etc-so it would be rather pointless since you had finally dealt with the problem &/or maybe she had other commitments.
Not getting my vote – too miserable
I live in Cliftonville and have to admit that the Council has made vast improvements on Northdown Road. Sadly, no matter how good the local Councillors are, I absolutely will not vote Labour due to the clowns currently in Government.