Strood loses out on promised Healthy Living Centre
Plus Medway Question Time is back, Reform vetting blocks Cllr Spalding from joining council group, B&M takes on former Homebase unit, news in brief, and more
Healthy Living Centres have become a key focus of community healthcare provision in Medway. But are they all they’re cracked up to be? With the utilisation of the sites low, and Strood losing out on one promised in 2017 in favour of Chatham, should we be putting all of our eggs in the HLC basket? Further down, we have news of our first Medway Question Time event of the year, an independent councillor who isn’t allowed to be a Reform councillor despite being a Reform member, B&M take on the former Homebase in Chatham, news in brief, and more.
Strood loses out on promised Healthy Living Centre
£6m designated for a new Healthy Living Centre in Strood has instead been spent to deliver the new Healthy Living Centre in Chatham, despite funding initially being allocated to complete both projects.
Responding to a series of questions from Labour councillors in Strood, NHS Kent and Medway Integrated Care Board explains how £14.5m allocated to deliver two new Healthy Living Centres in Medway will instead be used to only deliver one in Chatham instead.
In 2017, NHS funding set aside £8.5m for a Healthy Living Centre in Chatham and £6m for a similar project in Strood. The board highlights that the plans were not advanced ‘for unknown reasons’. Since the money needed to be spent by 2024, the money for the two projects was pooled and spent on the flagship scheme currently under construction in the Pentagon.
NHS Kent and Medway Integrated Care Board acknowledge that Strood and the Hoo Peninsula currently lack integrated community healthcare facilities. Still, they claim cannot assess the exact need until more data from the Local Plan is released. As ever, all roads lead back to the Local Plan.
Cllrs Field and Van Dyke, the Strood North and Frindsbury councillors behind the questions, highlight that the money for the centre in Strood was urgently needed given the town has ‘significant health inequalities and high levels of deprivation.’
They further raise an issue with the Gun Lane Surgery and Pharmacy in Strood, whose lease expires next year, yet it still serves over 5,000 patients in the area. Interestingly, the Integrated Care Board responds that it is unaware of any leases expiring in 2026.
Strood is set to be the only town in Medway without a Healthy Living Centre, with Chatham set to join Rochester, Gillingham, Rainham, and Lordswood as the fifth location in Medway later this year.
Healthy Living Centres are designed to be ‘one stop shops’ for community healthcare, providing services from initial GP consultations to assessments to minor treatments. Another report from NHS Kent and Medway explains that the existing HLCs in Medway ‘are among Kent and Medway’s best healthcare estate, offering modern, fit-for-purpose, quality facilities’ with ‘the buildings kept to a high standard.’
While these locations seem to be at the heart of community healthcare in Medway, it appears that all may not be well within the Healthy Living Centre ecosystem. The same report highlights that the leases for the Rochester, Rainham, and Lordswood sites will expire in 2031, with Gillingham following in 2035.
Under the strange legislation governing them, the NHS cannot extend these leases. As a result, the organisation is presented with two options: either purchase the buildings outright or hand them back to their owners. Neither option seems ideal in the context of providing community healthcare. The report suggests discussions are underway at a governmental level to find a third option that lets them retain the leases, but this is far from certain.
However, as is often the case with labyrinthine public sector contracts, the issues in how these centres operate may run deeper. The report states that the Healthy Living Centres operate by leasing space inside them for the medium and long-term provision of healthcare services and offering short-term bookable spaces.
Utilisation of the Healthy Living Centres across Medway averages out at around 40%, meaning the majority of space within them isn’t used at any given time. This is particularly problematic with the Rainham Healthy Living Centre, where 20% of the space is unable to be used ‘because there are large reception and open areas within the building that cannot be individually booked.’ Combined with ‘increases in service charges and other contractual costs relating to inflation, plus the fact that rent for these buildings also includes contributions to manage backlog maintenance', it is proving challenging to find tenants for the spaces. As a result, a number of healthcare services have exited the dedicated healthcare spaces within the Rainham centre, with some moving into the Millennium Centre community centre across the road instead.
Many of these problems are microcosms of the broader issues within the NHS, particularly when relating to large-scale contracts of this nature. Healthy Living Centres provide vital services, and often, they do so more efficiently than fragmented provision which would otherwise exist. With the government pushing to move more healthcare and diagnostic facilities from hospitals to the community, there is an opportunity for these locations to be better utilised than they are now.
All of which will be great for the towns with access to a Healthy Living Centre. But that list of towns will continue not to include Strood for the foreseeable future.
Medway Question Time is back
We’re delighted to be holding a new edition of our Medway Question Time live event next month. We ran a couple of these in 2023, but held off last year given the number of election debates we needed to put on instead.
Medway Question Time is your opportunity to participate in a panel discussion on the big issues facing Medway, featuring prominent Medway figures.
For our first event for 2025, our panel consists of:
Cllr Vince Maple, Labour Leader of Medway Council
Cllr George Perfect, Conservative Leader of the Opposition
Dalia Halpern, Chair of Trustees at Chatham Memorial Synagogue
Richard Morseley, Chief Executive of Chatham Historic Dockyard
We’ll be holding the event on Thursday 16 April at MidKent College in Gillingham.
Tickets are free, but booking is essential. When booking your spot, you can submit a question for the panel to discuss. We can’t guarantee we’ll be able to ask all of them (previous events have been popular!), but we’ll do what we can to ensure the broadest range of topics are featured on the night.
You can learn more about Medway Question Time and book your free ticket via our Eventbrite page.
Reform vetting blocks Cllr Spalding from council group
Following the recent Rochester East and Warren Wood by-election, where Reform managed to win their first two seats on Medway Council, it had been expected that the group would quickly consist of three, after independent councillor Chris Spalding announced on the same night that he had joined the party.
When the Reform group on Medway Council was formed, only the two newly elected councillors were members, with Cllr Spalding remaining an independent. At the time, we were told this was because he had to undergo a vetting process. This became more stark at the Medway Council budget meeting, when Cllr Spalding remained apart from the Reform group of Cllr Finch and Cllr Vye.
Local Authority asked Reform for clarity on the situation this week, and they told us that the party has a dedicated vetting process for defectors, and Cllr Spalding didn’t meet the criteria.
As a result, Cllr Spalding appears to have been left in a sort of political no man’s land. He’s a member of Reform on a national level, but isn’t allowed to be a Reform councillor.
These things never being straightforward, Cllr Spalding issued a statement to us which suggests that he doesn’t believe the party has followed the correct procedures with the vetting process and that an ‘incident’ with the current chair of the Rochester and Strood branch might have influenced the decision:
When I joined Reform UK, I did so as “Councillor Christopher Spalding”. While Reform has a vetting process for Councillors defecting from other political groups there is no such process for Independent Councillors wishing to join. I had not been advised of any such vetting process.
As you are no doubt aware, on the morning of the by elections, there was an incident at a polling station involving the current chair of Reform Rochester and Strood, and myself. This was reported by myself to Reform UK the same day. After this was reported, I suddenly found myself subject to vetting as a defecting Councillor, even though I was not defecting from any other party.
The vetting process consisted of a half hour teams interview with a person I had never met before and who knew very little about me. Despite being told I would be advised of the outcome at the end of the interview it was not until several days that I was informed this person did not think I “would be a good fit for Reform.” I will not comment further on the polling station incident for ongoing legal reasons but for the record Reform UK has not revoked or cancelled my membership.
In the Rochester East and Warren Wood by-election run-up, Cllr Spalding posted several pro-Reform social media posts across local Facebook groups. It is unclear whether this made any difference to the outcome, but given that the party won the second seat by only 21 votes, it is at least feasible that he helped the group form but is now not allowed to join.
Still, Reform is bullish about its future in Medway, believing its group will only grow. Without further by-elections, it is difficult to see where that might come from and whether Cllr Spalding will ultimately play a role in it.
B&M take on former Homebase store
Medway’s only Homebase store closed last month after the chain fell into administration. The Range bought many stores nationwide, while B&Q took on some others.
At the time, there was no buyer for the Chatham store, but a new planning application this week reveals that B&M will be taking on the unit, with plans to adorn it with quite possibly the worst logo in retail.
B&M have plans to refurbish the store, turning it into a home and garden outlet that won’t be very different to Home Bargains, which operates on the other side of the same retail park.
Future Medway reports that the store will open on 6 June. B&M has simultaneously applied for a licence from Medway Council to sell alcohol from 7am to 11pm every day.
In brief
🏫 Concerns have been raised over a proposed merger between Rainham Mark Education Trust and a poorly performing trust based in Deal. Parents have called the move a ‘blatant conflict of interest’, with the new acting Chief Executive of RMET also being the existing CEO of Veritas.
📚 KentOnline have published a one-sided take on home education in Kent, talking to one former head teacher who suggests the children taken out of school could be groomed, abused, or involved in serious crime. Unsurprisingly, the home education community (Medway has one of the largest in the country) has not responded well, nor were any parents represented in the article.
🥡 A planning application has been submitted to convert Intra's former Bengal Brassiere restaurant into a hybrid restaurant/takeaway. The submitted plans do not indicate what type of eatery it will likely be.
🍷 Sotto Lounge will open on 8 May in the Dockside Outlet Centre in Chatham. The bar and restaurant, which is like a slightly fancier Wetherspoons, will be open from breakfast until late.
More Authority
In the second of our two part interview with Medway music scene veterans and academics Kyra De Coninck and Chris de Coulon-Berthoud, we talk to them about their PhDs, their educational journeys, people that roleplay as Nazis, cadavers, and phone etiquette during interviews.
“The 1940s were not that great for my family”
In this second part of a two part interview, Steven talks to Kyra De Coninck and Chris de Coulon-Berthoud about their PhDs, and their educational journeys, people that role play as Nazis, cadavers and phone etiquette during interviews.
We’re also launching a second title! The Kent Current will be very similar to what we do here in Medway, but covering the wider county of Kent. We’ll launch fully next month, but you can subscribe for free now to ensure you don’t miss the first edition.
Footnotes
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Music that soundtracked the creation of this edition: Through Being Cool by Saves the Day, House Without a View by Lande Hekt, and Weirdo by Carla J Easton.
Strood has been treated appallingly since Medway Council's creation in 1998. I challenge anyone to prove me wrong.
𝘚𝘰𝘵𝘵𝘰 𝘓𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘨𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘰𝘱𝘦𝘯 𝘰𝘯 8 𝘔𝘢𝘺 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘋𝘰𝘤𝘬𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦 𝘖𝘶𝘵𝘭𝘦𝘵 𝘊𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘊𝘩𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘮.
This should read: Sotto Lounge will open on 8 May in the Dockside Outlet Centre in Gillingham.