By Local Democracy Reporter Daniel Esson
With plans for local government reorganisation finally announced, how will the biggest council carve-up in more than 50 years affect the county?
The abolition of the ‘two-tier’ council system – which has run much of England since 1974 – has been on the cards since 2024, when the Labour government announced its plans.
For almost two years, Kent and Medway’s 14 local authorities have been tasked with helping write the blueprint for their own abolition.
This week, the government has finally announced its preferences, just as Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer serves his final days in office before being replaced by Andy Burnham.
But what difference will the new system actually make to day-to-day life in Kent?
What the new councils will look like
Local government minister Steve Reed has chosen for Kent the option often referred to as ‘4b’.
This will split the county into four unitary authorities.
Education, planning, highways, collecting bins and running tips; currently, these are all divided between district and county councils – but in the new unitaries, these powers will be concentrated.
Using the geographies of the existing districts, the new unitary councils are:
East Kent – Canterbury, Thanet and Dover
Mid Kent – Folkestone & Hythe, Ashford and Swale
North Kent – Medway, Gravesham and Dartford
West Kent – Maidstone, Tonbridge & Malling, Tunbridge Wells and Sevenoaks
This specific layout was the one endorsed by Dover, Swale and Thanet councils.
Rejected options include proposals for three councils, five councils and even for one singular massive council – the option preferred by Kent County Council’s (KCC) Reform leadership.
Services
As it stands, the splitting of powers between districts/boroughs and the county causes much consternation at the lower level.
Approval of housing developments falls to districts and boroughs, but houses require roads – which are the responsibility of the county council.
Covering such a massive area, KCC’s highways officers are often called upon to attend local planning committee meetings where roads are a matter of contention, but seldom attend.
Districts and boroughs are responsible for organising bin collections – a system which has recently been reformed and standardised.
The county council, however, runs tips. In the new system, these large new councils will be responsible for both your bins and recycling centres.
As for roads, they will be in charge of fixing potholes, too.
How will it affect me?
The stated aim of the reorganisation is to “streamline” local services with a view towards further devolution in the service of economic growth.
The basic theory is what economists call “agglomeration effects”, that there can be productivity and cost benefits from organising services on a larger scale.
Indeed, local councils already seek these efficiencies by pooling together some services. Dover, Thanet and Canterbury operate PartnershipOne which pools their council tax services. Ashford, Maidstone and Swale jointly outsource their bin collections.
Under the new system, bin collections and the like will be organised by the large unitary councils, covering a massive area.
In theory, with responsibility for highways and housing and planning unified in one authority, decisions on housing developments and transport will work better together.
But this also means that planning committees will be making decisions covering a huge area. Will people in Folkestone or Hythe be enthused by Sheppey councillors voting in favour of new housing 50 miles away on the south coast?
Such tensions are real enough already with our existing council geographies.
The politics
In terms of political representation, the massive size of the new council may become evident to residents quite quickly.
Folkestone, Ashford and Swale may be the clearest case. The leaders of the opposition, for example, could be from Sittingbourne and Sheppey area, whereas the administration parties could be from Folkestone or Ashford, or vice versa.
English local government geography already creates areas which have vastly different places within them – usually larger towns surrounded by smaller villages.
With these even larger authorities, this will be amplified.
The new East Kent will contain Canterbury – the cosmopolitan university city – as well as Thanet and Dover, which are less diverse, economically worse-off and much more likely political territory for the likes of Reform UK.
More devolution?
The government’s announcement on local government reorganisation says it will “unlock the path towards devolution and economic growth”.
In practice, devolution is likely to mean the new unitary authorities pooling powers together in a new upper level, possibly including an elected mayor.
Under the incoming new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, a noted fan of devolution who benefitted handsomely from it as the directly elected mayor of Greater Manchester, it is quite likely this process will go further, with more powers.
In future years, Kent’s new councils may find themselves with more revenue-raising powers independent of the national government, and theoretically less beholden to Westminster on financial matters.
What now?
Elections to the four new Kent councils will take place in 2027, and they will exist as ‘shadow authorities’ alongside the current councils to learn how to take the reins.
By April 1, 2028, the new councils will take over fully, and the abolition of the councils which have run Kent for 50 years will be complete.
In the meantime, the 14 councils will be hard at work planning how various systems, including payroll, will be changed under the new system – which will likely involve at least some job losses.
The case for Unitary authorities is overwhelming but for Thanet and Dover there is the real issue that great and cosmopolitan city of Canterbury will be the centre of most things and we can end up being poor relations. This needs addressing from the start.
Agree it’s always Canterbury because they have a cathedral, Thanet and Dover get nothing
But there’s more if us, we could easily take Canterbury by force.
Just do what we pay for and get on with it please .
I see some chaos at first, as with most government reform, but can it be worse than it is now for Thanet. Maybe it will be. I will be glad to see TDC disappear . They have been poor for years. The boss of TDC couldn’t give a monkeys about it. The waste problems have been very bad and no real solution in sight. I wonder why there is a high sickness rate and low overtime take up in waste workers. Perhaps the workers are taken for granted? There was no real planning for the extra work involved with the new changes as far as I can see. Just BS from those responsible. So changes to get rid of this hopeless council is fine by me.
Will we have the same number of local councillors in our wards? Or will our representatives be spread more thinly?
There will be fewer cllrs, because all the functions will be under one roof.Now some may say that it reduces democracy others will point to the cost saving, so you takes your pick on that score.
I do not expect KCC to go wrong into the night, far from it, and I expect they will try to wreck the transition.
Of course the government has picked the wrong option which bite us on the bum in a few years, once it is realised how unviable East Kent will be and how dysfunctional mid kent will be, but as always we have to.learn the hard way.
There will be squabbles over the assets of the departing councils, but overall the idea is sound even if the implementation won’t be.
Will it not be the case that Canterbury ( and it’s residents are the ones who’ll rue it most?) I’m assuming ( happy to be corrected) that there’ll still be local elections to vote in an administration, based on a yet to be decided number of wards.
Being so disparate to Thanet and Dover the needs /wants of these are likely to continually overrulle Canterbury.
Is there a known funding model or will it still be based on council tax? Where again there will be imbalances in comparison to the current smaller authorities.
Will it all be run from a central administration or will it turn into the circus that was EKH where too many local vested interests and demands meant they were in constant turmoil and effectively had 4 departments each catering for the individual councils wants?
Who knows but it makes sense to run it from Canterbury which has been for centuries a regional capital and administrative centre.
Burnham has posted a land value tax to replace council tax, stamp duty, and business rates, but we will see.
It could be run on the existing county divisions and as Dover and Thanet reduced the number of cllrs by increasing each ward, that may suffice, again who knows.
So far there is an announcement but then comes the transition, but who will work on that is anyone’s guess.
I do hope County and TDC won’t be represented in the transitional secretariat as that would damn the organisation from the start.
In which case it’ll be damned from the outset, no way the top table of the new organisation is’nt composed of representatives of each council and being local government they’ll all just move desks get different titles and a few will take redundancy.
It’s what killed Ekh (as the housing officers just had new titles and name on pays
Ip) then when it all went wrong many just transferred back or were indoctrinated staff from ekh moving to the councils , all wanted a job so let the skeletons remain hidden.
It could all end up as a top heavy beaurocracy, with the benefit of more distant senior management and nigh on everyone who can working from home and having no intention of going out the door for anything to do with their work.
No doubt tdc will burn through as much of its reserves as it can, famp up pay for those deemed worthy , sell off anything they can to use as the deposits for ever more lending that’ll ne the bodies responsibility.
Hard to see any. Blue sky, green grass or light at end of tunnel.
I can tell you fir a fact, it is not the model to deliver tax payers value for money services. It does not promote competition between contractors as they use inefficient long term contracts to deliver road maintenance and bin collections to name but a few. They will tell you companies have to tender and the best all round contractor will win the overly long contracts, however the reality is much shorter contracts, delivered by smaller service providers bid for on works which exceeding £5.000 is the best options, such as now for example the contractors delivering local on street and car park signage, and other street furniture services as well as line markings and surface repairs, offer a far better services for the current boroughs and districts, than KCCs term maintenance contractor, the boroughs have a better quality, reliability and cost effective service delivered by these contractors, than KCCs over inflated cost and term, maintenance contractor, fact. So this will only work medium and long term if the 3 or 4 divided new areas can continue to use the contractors to deliver the current services and not be forced to use the kcc term maintenance contractors which is not vakue for money. No clauses and checks will mitigate this as all of kcc is inefficient and these people will carry this bad practice through to the new areas, who checks them?
Tdc use longterm contracts within its housing department. They seem cheap at outset but have very generous annual inflation uplifts. 6.7% per annum for a cleaning contract ( over 3 years that compounds to 21.4%.
Same as they commission inspection reports but then actually read them properly and accept recommendations without question, leading to considerable unnecessary expense. The legionella risk assessments are prime example.
Far less Cllrs and MPs please, can’t have your cake and eat it, less of you, off you pop now.