A new (slightly rubbish) music festival for Medway
Plus terrifying NHS delay figures, council tax increases, and a trip across the Lower Thames Crossing
Welcome to another Local Authority, some kind of newsletter about Medway. This week there are some truly terrifying figures about how our NHS is coping, the council tax increase we get to look forward to, and a closer look at the Lower Thames Crossing. But first, a slightly rubbish music festival might be on the way..
Something worse than the Castle Concerts might be coming
A new music festival is coming to Medway.
Usually, this is the kind of news that I would be delighted by. Medway’s music scene has been chronically underserved for years, and a new event of exciting live music would be a positive thing for the towns.
Then I saw the poster and I’m immediately back out again.


I don’t even know where to start with this.
First off, the sub-Castle Concerts type of events is an immediate red flag, and absolutely no imagination has gone into the names of the days.
So what do we have here? Classical Orchestra is presumably a Proms-lite event. Dance Day sounds like the kind of music event a headteacher would put on to appeal to the youth. 80s, 90s & 00s Live (there’s a mouthful) is the usual nostalgia crap, and then there’s the beautifully vague Community Family Day, which presumably exists to get the event the thumbs up from licencing at Medway Council.
All of this seems to be incredibly haphazard. I tried looking into the history of Stardust Events, the company attempting to organise the event, but fell down a rabbit hole of interconnected companies and events, with little clear insight on what they actually do outside of having operated some smaller-scale events in London.
In itself, the Great Lines feels like it should be a pretty good location for a large-scale festival event. It’s a large open space in a central location with decent public transport connections, and while it doesn’t have parking, it can’t really be much worse than the Castle Concerts, surely?
Well.
The Castle Concerts tend to have a capacity of around 5,000 attendees. The Great Lines Great Music Weekend - a truly terrible - will have varying capacities ranging from 5,000 for Classical Orchestra up to 25,000 for Dance Day.
Which, undeniably, is a large number of people.
Given the event is scheduled to happen in only four months, one would assume a lot of planning would have gone into it by this stage. This might be optimistic as not only have the organisers even obtained a licence for the event yet, their documents seem to be pretty shoddily thrown together.
Still, there is this snazzy map at least.
Now, I’ve attended a fair few festivals in my time, and this seems half-arsed at best. Taking aside meaningless brand nonsense like ‘sponsor activation’ areas, it’s as if things have been randomly dotted across the site. The stage locations seem arbitrary in particular, with no clear layouts of walking routes around the site.
It’s also worth noting that this is a substantial part of the Great Lines Heritage Park being taken up by this event, both taking away a large local open space resource from residents for days, as well as blocking a key walking route between Chatham and Gillingham. This kind of takeover of public parks by private events is becoming more common though as cash-strapped local councils seek new income streams.
As ever, objections have been submitted to the licence application from the environmental health team at Medway Council and perennial objectors Kent (Fun) Police. Kent Police have concerns about, well, everything, from noise and traffic issues to the suitability of the park and ride (top policing there), people getting in with drugs, and the usual catch-all anti-social behaviour.
The licence application is set to be decided by Medway Council next Friday. Hilariously, the organisers of the Dance Day intend to start selling tickets next Thursday. If you’re tempted by this event, you might want to hold off a couple of days before committing to your ticket.

What could go wrong?
NHS in numbers
I’d rather not be writing this section, but it is clear that nationally the NHS is under significant pressure. As such, I’ve been digging into the key metrics on how our system is coping locally, particularly for emergency care. The numbers aren’t pretty by any means…
999 calls: South East Coast Ambulance answered 84,799 calls in December. The average time for a call to be answered was just under 3 minutes, with 10% of callers waiting longer than 7 minutes for an answer.
Ambulance response times:
Category 1 (immediately life-threatening incidents) should be reached within 7 minutes. In December, South East Coast Ambulance reached these calls in an average of just over 11 minutes. 10% of incidents took longer than 19 minutes to reach.
Category 2 (heart attacks, strokes etc) should be reached within 18 minutes. In December, these incidents were reached in an average of 46 minutes. 10% of incidents took longer than 1 hour 36 minutes to reach.
Category 3 (labour, abdominal pains, burns etc) should be reached within 2 hours. In December, these incidents were reached in an average of just under 4 hours. 10% of incidents took longer than 10 hours to reach.
Category 4 (non-urgent incidents) should be reached within 3 hours. In December, these incidents were reached in an average of 5 hours. 10% of incidents took longer than 12 and a half hours to reach.
Ambulance queues: 8% of patients arriving at Medway Hospital are waiting more than 30 minutes to be handed over to A&E. This is down from 15% last week, and represents positive work that Medway Hospital have done on this problem, against a national average of 36%.
A&E waits: 44% of patients are waiting to be seen for longer than 4 hours at Medway Hospital. This is up from 39% last week, and worse than the national average of 40%.
Waiting lists: 38% of patients are waiting longer than 18 weeks for routine treatments. This is marginally down on the 39% last week, and slightly below the national average of 41%.
Cross the Lower Thames Crossing
I’m still not convinced the Lower Thames Crossing, an expensive tunnel connecting Medway to Essex will ever end up being built, but National Highways seem to be ploughing ahead with the project, so who am I to argue?
As planned, the Lower Thames Crossing would be the longest road tunnel in the UK, crossing the Thames east of Gravesend and arriving in Tilbury, before a new road fully connects it to the M25. I’m a believer that new roads don’t particularly solve traffic issues long-term, but I’ve also spent enough of my life sitting in queues at Dartford that I’m happy to roll the dice on it.
National Highways have released a new fly-through video of the crossing, showing the gloriously complicated junction that will be created on the Kent side, as well as the full route right into Essex. It’s fun if you find this sort of thing interesting at least.
As it stands, the project is set to cost around £9bn and be complete by 2030, but I’d maybe add a little more to both of those numbers, as that’s how these things tend to go.
Covid in numbers
Cases: Once a month, the ONS do publish local data on cases. It is now estimated that 4% of the Medway population would currently test positive for covid. In the wider south east region, the figure is 4.5%, down from 5.2% last week.
Hospitalisations: There are currently 24 patients being treated for covid in Medway Hospital, with 1 of them on a ventilator. This is down 23% on last week.
Deaths: No new deaths were recorded this week, keeping Medway at 1000 covid deaths in total.
Vaccinations: 60% of the 12+ population in Medway have received at least three doses of covid vaccine.
10% of those under 12 have had at least one dose of the vaccine.
64% of those aged 50+ have so far had their autumn booster.
Your council tax is probably going up more than usual
Good news for fans of paying more for declining local services, as Medway Council Leader Alan Jarrett suggested this week that Medway will take the full 5% increase they are allowed when it comes to setting council tax for the year.
For several years, councils have been limited to only increasing council tax by 3% without holding a referendum, and good luck getting the public to vote for higher taxes.
Given the state of everything this year, the government has upped that to 5% this year, and frankly, any council would be foolish not to take it. Medway, like most councils, is struggling financially, as shrinking central funding and rising costs have pushed them closer to the edge of bankruptcy.
Politically though, it’s a disaster. No one likes to see an increase in tax, particularly at a time when the cost of living is spiralling, and that this happens to fall on an election year for Medway will make the decision that much more bitter.
We won’t know the final decision until the budget for Medway is set next month, but it seems very likely we’ll all be paying 5% more council tax in a few months. That’s about £80 per year on a typical band D home, and will certainly be noticed by many in our towns.
More Authority
Paid supporters of Local Authority receive two extra editions of the newsletter every week. This week, we published our monthly guide to the current state of the local election campaign, while Steven Keevil embarked on a potentially NSFW odyssey deep into the ‘Chatham Pocket’.
Also, as we approach the end of Medway Council Leader Alan Jarrett's time in charge of the council, we’ve dropped the paywall on our exclusive interview with him from last year. It’s a must-read if you want to understand the man who has been running Medway for years and is a frank and wide-ranging discussion about the kind of Medway he’ll be leaving.
Becoming a paid supporter ensures we can keep this thing running for the long term and currently costs as little as £3.75 per month. Please consider it if you can!
Stray Links
The former Green Lion pub in Rainham is available to rent (KentLive). It can be yours for a mere £1,667pcm.
231 flats are planned for the former Buzz Bingo site in Chatham (KentOnline). The usual suspects are grumpy about this, particularly the lack of parking, but anything beats a derelict bingo hall in a prime town centre location.
374 flats and commercial space have been approved for Bardell Wharf in Rochester (KentOnline). The usual suspects are grumpy about this, particularly the lack of parking, but anything beats a derelict wasteland in a prime town centre location.
The Greedy Banker pub in Rainham is set to open a cocktail bar (KentLive). Rainham is on a run of interesting new openings at the moment, and this seems like a positive addition to the town.
Footnotes
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If you hear about any Medway news that might be of interest, let me know! Hit reply to message me directly, DM me on Twitter, or leave a comment below.
Music that soundtracked the creation of this newsletter: The Logic of Chance by Dan le Sac vs Scroobius Pip, crydancing by sad alex, Midnights by Taylor Swift, and Le Tigre by Le Tigre.
25,000 is an huge number. Serious issues will be with transportation. If Network Rail have bus replacement due to engineering work, it would cause severe problems. Parking if possible on the lines would be restricted even 2000 cars would take a big space and if the weather is poor, it will cause a complete mess. The residential type roads are already at capacity throughout Medway (you need to look beyond the immediate perimeter roads). Medway Hospital is adjacent and can only accessed via the same residential roads.
Maidstone at Mote Park is different as they have internal roads and better suited to such events as is Detling.
Armed Forces Days aren’t so bad as the event attracts people throughout the day rather than all at once in the evening depending how many performers there are.
Unfortunately the type of music being played will affect the type of people. New Day near Faversham with Prog Rock is different to a Hip Hop Gangsta Rap, as is Rambling Man Rock Music or Sweden Rock … the genre affects the audience.
@Ed & Steve: Are you planning another all-party hustings for the local elections?