“We’re going to do very well”

With county council elections cancelled in East Sussex this year because of local government reorganisation, attention turns across the border to Kent where voters go the polls on Thursday, May 1. 81 seats are up for grabs, including seats representing Romney Marsh and Tenterden (covering Wittersham and Appledore). Rye News will have a full list of who is standing next week.

On Monday, March 31 Reform UK leader Nigel Farage launched the party’s Kent campaign with the prediction: “We’re going to do very well.”

Mr Farage refused to say how many of his candidates might be elected but said there would be a concentrated effort on the coastal divisions.

The Conservatives currently have 57 members at county hall and many observers believe Reform UK will pose a serious threat not only to the Tories but also to Labour.

The Reform UK leader started his day in Hythe with a walkabout where he met supporters and locals before pausing for a cup of coffee at a local tea rooms.

Wearing a green tweed jacket, Mr Farage said: “I’m feeling very optimistic. If you look at some of the general election scores we got around the county and bear in mind it was a very short campaign from a standing start.

“We’ve been building branches around the county and we won a KCC by-election at Greenhithe. I look at areas like this (Hythe), where they’re well organised, they’ve got proper local candidates with real experience and quite a lot of business-type people as well.

“We’re going to do very well but how many seats we’re going to win it’s so tough to call because it is such a split race.”

Asked where he is targeting. he said: “I think the absolute best areas will be, frankly, all round the coast and ten to 15 miles inland will be our number one target areas but it’s not to say that other places aren’t as well.”

Mr Farage mentioned the issue of small boats carrying asylum seekers across the Channel and acknowledged KCC’s issues in having to initially take in lone youngsters arriving in to the UK that way.

“This is a frontline county,” he said. “Even though there are fewer asylum seekers spread around Kent, although for child services it is particularly taxing, this issue and the fact it is happening on the doorstep…that isn’t going away.”

Mr Farage visited several businesses in the town’s high street including a card shop and a café whose owners said they are going to be hit hard as the hikes in national insurance contributions come into force. He said it would be a “really bad day” for businesses.

He accepts that KCC has been underfunded and the cost of social care has ballooned in recent years as the population has got older. But Mr Farage claimed KCC has been “horrendously financially mismanaged” and carries a huge amount of debt.

The Reform leader added: “Our argument is that the Conservatives have run Kent for too long, they have become complacent…we’re going to put some people in with business brains to fix it.”

Conservative Cllr Harry Rayner, deputy cabinet member for finance at KCC, said: “KCC is as financially well-managed and it could be given the high inflation suffered over recent years and the constraints put on council tax by central government and particularly the expenditure on things like highways and associated works.”

He said that Kent’s debts, thought to be in excess of £800m are partly due to “aged” loans taken out 20 years or more ago when central government was encouraging county councils to do so.

But Cllr Rayner said his authority has “retained assets” of more than £450m.

The influential Local Government Information Unit recently said that KCC is a “perfectly well-run” council.

Image Credits: Simon Finlay .