Medway housing more unaffordable than ever
Plus making digital services usable, VE Day lights up the sky, news in brief, and more
The high cost of housing in Medway and the ongoing lack of supply are things we’ve written about a lot over the years, but new data on the situation paints an even bleaker picture than ever. Further down, we have news on how Medway Council are trying to make its digital services usable, a look at the remarkable Rochester skyline for VE Day, news in brief, and more.
Medway housing more unaffordable than ever
The average private rent for a home in Medway is now nearly £1,200, with rents rising faster in Medway than at any time since the Office for National Statistics started tracking localised data.
The average private rent in Medway reached £1,181pm in March 2021, up 11.3% from a year earlier. Private sector rents had steadily increased in Medway before taking more significant jumps over the past three years.
At the lowest end of the spectrum, the average one-bedroom property reached £854pm, two-bedrooms £1,087pm, three-bedrooms £1,277pm, and four-plus-bedroom properties reaching £1,766pm.
The 11.3% annual increase in private rents in Medway is well above the England average of 7.8%, the southeast average of 7%, and even outstrips London, which saw rents increase by 9.1% over the same period.
Of course, Medway is by no means alone in this position, even if we are at the higher end of the spectrum. Successive failures to meet housing targets across the country have left us in a position where demand significantly outstrips supply, leaving renters trapped in a spiralling cycle of out of control rental costs.
Renters in Medway wishing to escape this cycle face an ever more difficult house price market if they want to buy their own property too.
The average house price in Medway is now £300,000, while the average earnings in our towns is £35,700. This means that Medway’s affordability ratio is now 9.1 times earnings, meaning that on average, even two people on average salaries applying for a joint mortgage in Medway would struggle to obtain a mortgage for an average home.
As a result of these figures, one might assume that it was imperative to get the cost of housing under control in Medway, but this would require substantial levels of housebuilding that we are not even close to achieving.
Medway’s annual housing requirement is 1,594 new homes every year, and because of constant failures to get enough housing built, the government actually expects our area to be delivering 1,913 each year. To say that we are not hitting either figure would be something of an understatement.
In the most recent year of data, Medway managed to increase its figure by 1,166 homes, which, despite being over 400 short of the needed figure, is the best the area has achieved for as long as the data has been recorded.
Of course, even building the right level of housing (which we aren’t) isn’t necessarily enough if they are the wrong types of homes or aren’t actually affordable for anyone. With the housing affordability ratio above, genuinely affordable housing becomes more important than ever.
Despite that, Medway has managed to see just 2,056 affordable homes built in the last ten years. The largest proportion (1,000) were under affordable home ownership schemes, while 830 were affordable rent schemes. The remaining 226 are arguably the only truly affordable homes: social housing. It is unclear how much good this can do though, when, on average, Medway is only managing to build 23 new social homes each year, all while other tenures become increasingly out of reach for residents.
Again, none of this is a unique problem to Medway, as many councils nationwide are looking at similar figures. But with Medway’s growing population and decreasing affordability, something will eventually have to change, as the combination of spiralling housing costs with a failure in supply will not be sustainable.
Medway Council aims to make digital services usable
If you’ve ever tried to report anything to Medway Council using one of their online forms, there’s a good chance you’ve been left somewhat frustrated. Indeed, your humble writer here today booked a trip to the tip earlier on top, which required an 11 page form, and when he realised he’d booked the wrong day, there was another four page form to cancel the booking.
Navigating these forms can be annoying but doable if you’re vaguely tech savvy. Still, many residents don’t find accessing or using them straightforward, which, as we move towards an increasingly digital world, is only going to cause friction.
Medway Council is embarking on an initiative called Medway 2.0, which is attempting to rebuild its digital services from the ground up. They believe their approach to this is innovative, primarily because they are figuring out what they want the service to do and then looking for the tech to make that work rather than buying tech and forcing systems to work around it. They claim it will make things easier for residents to report things, but it will extend into swathes of the council’s operation, up to and including AI wellness chatbots for staff.
We sat down with Cllr Alex Paterson, portfolio holder for Community Safety, Highways, and Enforcement, to ask him exactly why we should welcome Medway’s new AI overlords.
Alex quickly laughs off the question, pointing out that “AI is a small part of the methodology we will use to deliver better results for residents.” Alex is eager to get on to the meat of the Medway 2.0 experience, telling me it’s “not an app. It’s not AI. It’s systems agnostic. It doesn't matter whether you're using a Mac or a PC. It doesn't care if you've got an Android phone. It's about rethinking processes.” Which is all very nice, but what does it actually mean for residents engaging with the council?
As the system is still in its early days, Alex points out a tangible example that Medway Council is already using. Their process for reporting nuisance vehicles is at the forefront of the Medway 2.0 technology. Medway Council can deal with abandoned or illegally parked cars, while residents may also report things like untaxed vehicles, which is the responsibility of the DVLA. In the past, if a resident reported a vehicle that would be down to the DVLA to deal with, Medway Council would point the resident in that direction. Under the new system, Medway can report the matter directly on behalf of the resident. It’s a relatively minor thing, but something that makes things a little bit easier. The intent for Medway 2.0 is to make things smoother across the board.
Alex thinks being able to provide more relevant and data can go a long way as well: “I think a lot of frustration with services isn't necessarily about the service itself, it's about the not knowing. It's arriving at a bus stop and not knowing when the next bus is going to be. If you can rely on real-time information, you're a lot less frustrated. So I think that actually building that into the process, understanding the customer's frustration is almost part of how we are trying to rethink these services.”
The use of AI is an emerging technology that isn’t entirely without controversy, but Medway Council are bullish about its potential. Alex makes it clear that the intent isn’t for AI to replace human workers, but to streamline the work that they do: “I don't want skilled social workers who have studied at university and have a great degree of specialism to be spending unnecessary time typing up case notes that could have been transcribed in real-time by an AI bot. If that's something that the customer is happy with and that's something that is still at their discretion whether they participate in that process. But the benefits for both the customer and for the officer are great because it streamlines that process and takes away a lot of that wasted time.”
As it stands, Medway Council handles tens of thousands of calls each year from Medway residents, who often want to do relatively simple things like book a tip visit, request a new bin, or report flytipping. Inevitably, part of improving the online reporting systems is to try to move some of these interactions from phone calls to online. When asked if residents will still be able to call in, thinking about those who aren’t particularly savvy online in particular, Alex tells me that residents “will be able to engage with the council in the way that is most efficient for them and for the council.” This means the phone systems will continue to exist, but there is a natural move toward more online reporting for more people.
Alex is also very enthusiastic to highlight that Medway is leading innovation in this area, arguing their approach for doing this is unique among their peers: “The stuff we're doing is being developed in-house. So this is Medway built like all those great ships from the dockyard. That enables us to then respond really quickly to requests from staff to adapt to local circumstances. What we are doing is attracting attention from other councils, because not every council has taken the opportunity to rethink its processes in this way. I'm really pleased that we are innovating in that way, but because we are the ones doing it, Medway residents are the ones who benefit first.”
Medway 2.0 will be rolling out to more Medway Council services over time, but if you’d like to take a version of it for a spin now, it might be a good time to report that nuisance vehicle that’s been bugging you for a while.
VE Day lights up the sky
We’re not usually in the business of sharing fancy photography from Medway Council, but as part of last week’s VE Day commemorations, the skies across Medway were transformed by searchlights and other light displays around the towns.
Despite the advance warning of what would happen, there was no shortage of posts in Facebook groups asking what the weird lights in the sky were. This photo above shows the scene across Rochester, with the castle and cathedral lit up while searchlights scan the skies. Definitely one of the more unique Medway displays in some time.
In brief
🗣️ There’s a full Medway Council meeting tomorrow night (Wed 14 May). Don’t expect many fireworks though as it’s the obligatory Annual Meeting where very little happens beyond a few formalities.
🌳 The opposition Conservative Group on Medway Council have unanimously re-elected their leadership team of George Perfect and Gary Hackwell for the coming year.
👷 Demolition work is underway inside the former Debenhams building on Chatham High Street. The enabling works will remove much of the interior, with Medway Council hoping the NHS will take on part of the building for an elective care centre.
✍️ Medway Council is seeking consultants to design the new open space at Temple Marsh in Strood. The contract is worth £120,000 and could take up to two years.
🔥 Two teenagers have been arrested after the former St John Fisher School building in Chatham was set on fire for the umpteenth time.
🏫 Robert Napier School in Gillingham has applied for planning permission to demolish their referral unit and replace it with a new block containing science labs, classrooms, an IT suite, and more.
🐐 The Waggon at Hale pub in Chatham has been accused of neglecting the animals in their garden after photos went viral on Facebook, leading to a lot of anger and a poisoned goat.
🛍️ Hobbycraft in Strood has closed suddenly after the landlord repossessed the building, locking the retailer’s staff outside and its stock inside.
More Authority
We received great feedback on our big Medway Council Leader Vince Maple interview. While some outlets might go for the quick soundbite, we’re proud that our interviews have a more detailed and focused approach, particularly when talking to politicians about their record. Anyway, it’s a good read, so please take a look if you haven’t already.
“I'll stand on my track record of decades of service”
Steven sat down with Medway Council Leader Cllr Vince Maple for the fourth time, two years after he took control of Medway Council following the 2023 local elections. They discuss what powers Vince actually has to improve things in Medway, the future leadership of Labour in North Kent, whether we should improve Medway’s ties to Europe, and lots more.
It’s a bit of a political bonanza this week. Coming up later this week, we’ve also got our latest column from Kent Police and Crime Commissioner Matthew Scott and the recording from our recent Medway Question Time event at MidKent College. Then, at the end of the week, we’ll abruptly shift gears with our latest culture briefing and Sunday interview. As always, our briefing editions are free to all subscribers, but our additional columns and interviews are exclusive to our paid supporters.
Footnotes
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Music that soundtracked the creation of this edition: The Execution of All Things by Rilo Kiley, Middle Spoon by Cheekface, and Superstar by Caroline Rose.
Interesting to see the tender for consultancy services for Temple Marsh. While I do not really know what it means in practice, I would have thought the weighting for "social value" for an open space would be greater than 5%? But then again this is presumably the social value of the consultancy services - so what on earth does that mean? :)