By-election runners and riders
Plus masks return at Medway Hospital, MCH IT issues still ongoing, news in brief, and more
Welcome back to the first proper Local Authority news briefing of 2025! We’re delighted to be back and recharged, bringing you news on the upcoming council by-elections in Medway. So far, 13 candidates have thrown their hats into the ring, so we look at who the electorate will get to choose between. Further down, we have some double health news: Medway Hospital has reintroduced masking (to a point) as it tackles a big flu epidemic, and Medway Community Healthcare still doesn’t have working IT systems five weeks after they took them offline. Let’s get to it.
By-election runners and riders
It feels very us to start the year writing about the story we finished the year with: the impending Medway Council by-elections. Three seats will be up for grabs in the first serious test for the Medway Labour administration that swept to power in 2023.
With three of their councillors winning parliamentary seats in July’s General Election and the Labour Party not being huge fans of MPs double jobbing like that, all three resigned in December, triggering the by-elections.
On 6 February, Rochester East & Warren Wood and Gillingham South voters will go to the polls to elect new councillors to represent them, with two seats up for grabs in the former.
While the deadline for nominations isn’t until the end of the week, we already have a clear picture of the runners and riders in the election, with the candidate lists offering a true ‘Who? No, really, who?’ list of political figures.
So, let’s take a look at the dazzling possibilities on offer so far:
Rochester East & Warren Wood
Labour are defending these two seats, with Lauren Edwards and Tristan Osborne stepping down. In their places are Carolyn Hart and Robert Wyatt. Hart is a writer, lecturer, and trade union activist. At the same time, Wyatt is a former headteacher who hopes to be a ‘strong, approachable voice for all Rochester East & Warren Wood residents’. Whether those residents will need to approach him at his home in Cliffe, seven miles away, is unclear. Wyatt is Vice Chair of Cliffe Parish Council and has spent a long time fighting against development in Cliffe, the kind of thing the administration he is standing to represent will be eager to push through.
The Conservatives are fielding George Clarke and Tolga Sirlan because the main thing their group of 20 men and zero women needs is two more men. Clarke and Sirlan both stood in the ward in 2023, where they failed to trouble the electorate in any way. Clarke works in communications, and Sirlan in engineering consultancy, but they do at least both live in the ward.
The Greens have come up with Jeremy Spyby-Steanson and Grace Duffy. Steanson stood in Gillingham North in 2023, while Duffy is on the ballot for the first time. It marks a return to Medway politics for Steanson, who stood in Hartlepool at the General Election and scared Richard Tice into standing elsewhere.
For the Liberal Democrats, it’s Sarah Manuel and Anita Holloway. Both have stood in repeated Rochester elections since 2019, and the party is taking this so seriously that it has barely bothered to mention either candidate on its website or social media.
Reform is the only main party that has yet to declare its candidate lineup. We understand that High Halstow parish councillor Bill Khatkar will be one of the candidates, but who will join him is unclear. It would be logical if Rochester and Strood parliamentary candidate Daniel Dabin threw his hat into the ring, but whether he’d want to do it is another matter.
Gillingham South
Labour have selected Liubov Nestorova as their candidate to replace Naushabah Khan. Nestorova is the wife of the current Mayor of Medway, Marian Nestorov, and will be fighting her first election.
The Conservatives have chosen, brace yourself, another man in Saboor Ahmed, who stood in the ward in 2015. He did okay at the time in a solidly Labour area, currently runs a local restaurant, and has lived in the ward for 25 years.
The Greens have gone with Trish Marchant, who has been standing in elections across Medway since 2010, without ever winning any of them. Marchant works as a healthcare engineer, and the party are eager to point out that she lived in the ward 18 years ago.
The Liberal Democrats held Gillingham South for many years until losing the ward in 2015. In an effort to reclaim it, they are putting forward Onyx Rist as their candidate. Rist has stood in two previous council elections, coming last in both.
It is unclear at this stage who Reform will put forward for the ward, though it is worth noting that UKIP came within 100 votes of winning a seat in the ward in 2015, so they will be looking closely at this seat.
Of course, it’s too early to predict how these elections might go, and we won’t have the final confirmed candidate lists until next week, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t engage in wild speculation. Labour will be expecting to retain all three seats, and losing two of them will cause them to lose their majority on Medway Council. The wards have both been reasonably safe for the party in recent years. Still, as always, by-elections are unpredictable, and it is hard to argue that there is currently a lot of anti-government sentiment. Who benefits from this is a more interesting question. The Conservatives are the natural opposition to Labour in Medway, but Reform will be eager to prove they can win these seats. That assumes they manage to get themselves together and find some candidates by then, anyway.
Masks return at Medway Hospital
Medway Hospital has reintroduced mask-wearing in most settings due to the current flu epidemic. Since mandating this sort of thing is challenging these days, staff are asked to wear masks voluntarily, and patients are asked to wear one if they present with a cough, though this is once again voluntary.
The UK is currently experiencing one of its worst flu seasons in many years. The numbers of hospital admissions, particularly in the south of England, are already well above the levels from last winter and showing little signs of slowing down.
In this light, Medway Hospital has decided to reintroduce masks to limit infections, a decision that other nearby hospitals like Darent Valley have also made.
Flu is clearly winning the virus battle this year, as ironically, rates for covid are far lower than during any previous winter since the pandemic began in 2020. If you want to go down a rabbit hole of respiratory virus stats, the government’s national flu and covid surveillance report has you covered.
In this light, NHS Kent and Medway are urging eligible residents to get their flu and covid vaccines if they haven’t already. Vaccinations are available until the end of January, and as of last month, only 37% of those in a clinical risk group had come forward for their jabs.
If eligible, you can find a walk-in covid vaccine centre here and pharmacies offer flu jabs here.
MCH IT issues are still ongoing
In the first week of December, Medway Community Healthcare, which provides, er, community healthcare across Medway, took its IT systems offline after its network was hit by ‘suspicious activity’.
As a result, the complex healthcare web that MCH manages across Medway had to revert to paper documents instead of computers, leading to much slower communications and, in many cases, systems that could not communicate with each other.
Now, you may be thinking that a large organisation like MCH would be able to get on top of this problem fairly quickly, and everything will return to normal. To which we say, oh, you sweet summer child.
Most of MCH’s IT systems remain offline five weeks after the initial incident, with the organisation operating in ‘business continuity’ mode. This effectively means reverting everything to paper with the intent that it all gets scanned back into the system when it’s back online. Realistically, this backup was designed for short term use, not for weeks at a time.
Of course, this sort of gap in the system is leading to inevitable risks for patients. Healthcare professionals in several settings are now unable to check patient records for things like medications or allergies, and communication between MCH organisations and GP surgeries is not moving as intended.
Worst of all, MCH still has no timeline for resolving the issues. Perhaps the paper is here to stay…
In brief
📍 The Local Government Chronicle believes Medway will likely merge with Gravesham and Dartford under new local government reorganisation proposals. The plans would see Kent split into three or four new unitary authorities.
🚒 Wigmore Smallholders Club had to be evacuated on New Year’s Eve after tear gas was released in the toilets. It is unclear how it happened, but several people were treated for minor injuries.
🏗️ Medway Council officers have recommended approval for a 168-home development on the former Morgan Timber yard in Strood. The development plays a big role in linking Strood town centre with the Medway Valley Park area, though big questions remain about safe pedestrian access through the one tiny rail arch to the site, which will need to be shared with vehicles.
More Authority
Our first interview of the year was with Adriana Temali, Education Manager at the (checks notes) League of Minnesota Cities. Adriana used to be the diversity advisor for MidKent College in Medway, so we spoke to her to discuss how Minnesota compares to Medway, what 2024 Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz is like, and whether, as some claim, equality and diversity are what’s wrong with the modern world.
Our full interviews are exclusively available to our paid supporters. If you’d like to check them out, as well as our additional in-depth reporting and columns, you can try out our paid subscription for 30 days completely free. It’s a great way to get the new year off to a good start by supporting independent local news for our towns.
Footnotes
Follow us on social media! We’re on Facebook, Instagram, BlueSky, and Threads, but not that other one.
If you enjoy Local Authority, please share it with your friends, family, associates, and enemies. We have no meaningful marketing budget, so we rely on word of mouth from our readers to find new readers. You can even get some sweet rewards for sending new readers our way. Details here.
Music that soundtracked the creation of this edition: Good News by Withered Hand, The Joy of Sects by Chemtrails, and Death Club by Slime City.
https://x.com/Dabin_ReformUK/status/1876905895784763437
For a less cynical view of the Conservative candidates, see https://www.medwayconservativegroup.org.uk/news/medway-conservatives-announce-candidates-february-2025-elections.