What Reform’s big Kent win means for Medway
Plus Innovation Park Medway to become a car park, auditing Medway, new bank branch to open in Chatham, news in brief, and more
Last week, Reform took control of Kent County Council, but what does the change of administration over the border mean for us here in Medway? We ponder the potential implications below. Further down, we have news of the latest development in the doomed Innovation Park Medway story, an auditor visits Medway Council, a bank proposes to.. checks notes.. open a new branch in Medway, news in brief, and more.
What Reform’s big Kent win means for Medway
Reform swept to power across Kent last week, gaining control of Kent County Council, taking 57 of the county’s 81 seats in the process. The victory ended decades of Conservative control of the county council and saw Kent County Council entering a new reality.
Still, we are not a Kent-wide publication (though we know one that is), so we aren’t going to dwell too much on the results themselves here. If you want to follow more about the new administration at KCC, you can read analysis on our sister title, the Kent Current, here. What we’re interested here is what, if any, impact KCC’s new Reform overlords could have on the Medway side of the border.
On paper, who administers KCC shouldn’t have much impact on Medway. Both councils are upper-tier authorities handling similar responsibilities in their respective areas. While there are a small number of cross-border panels and organisations that Medway and Kent both sit on, each council essentially does it’s own thing.
The elephant in the room, though, is the current government drive for devolution and local government reorganisation. In the short term, every council in Kent will be abolished and three or four larger unitary authorities covering areas of roughly half a million people. Medway is almost certain to be merged with the existing KCC areas of Dartford and Gravesham, and possibly a chunk of Swale. Longer term, a Kent-wide mayor will gain significant strategic powers for the region and a Combined Strategic Authority will feed into the big decisions across the county.
All of this should proceed as scheduled, no matter who is in charge at County Hall, as the government is forcing things through. However, it is unclear how much a Reform-administered KCC will be interested in engaging with this process. Speaking to the Kent Current, KCC’s longest-standing Reform councillor said he didn’t support the idea of a devolved Kent mayor, though the party doesn’t appear to have formed a consensus view on the issue yet.
Until now, the moves toward devolution have been widely agreed upon across Kent, with both Labour-controlled Medway Council and Conservative-controlled Kent County Council sharing the same desire for devolution, or at least the money and powers that come with that. As such, both upper-tier authorities in Kent have presented a united front when lobbying the government. Whether Medway will be able to find common ground with a Kent County Council led by Reform remains to be seen. Medway Council leader Vince Maple’s statement following Reform’s win suggests it might be challenging to do so:
“Reform UK in Kent have now crossed the line from a party of protest to a party of governing. With that comes serious responsibility. They'll quickly find that fixing deeply complex issues like adult social care and special educational needs takes more than soundbites, slogans, or blame games.
After 14 years of Conservative austerity that hollowed out local government, there are no easy efficiencies left to find - only hard choices. The public will be watching to see if they are up to the job.
I thank the outgoing KCC leader Roger Gough for the positive, constructive approach on Devolution and Local Government Reorganisation.”
Within all of this, it is worth noting that while devolution was largely agreed between Medway and KCC, the issue of local government reorganisation has proved rather more thorny across the county. Different district councils with different administrations across the county have competing desires on what their future looks like, which already made finding agreement challenging enough. At the top of the tree, though, Medway and KCC both accepted that changes were coming. Medway is now faced with a situation where KCC may try to fight back against any attempts to abolish it, given it is the first time Reform has won any serious power within the county.
Reform is set to choose their Kent County Council’s new leader later this week, and in a couple of weeks, they will have their first council meeting in charge of the county. Those things might give us some insight into what the future might look like. Whatever happens, we’re all heading into some very deep, uncharted waters.
Innovation Park Medway to become giant car park
The latest stage in the sorry saga of Innovation Park Medway will see a huge chunk of the land that had tens of millions spent on it to become a centre for 3,000 high-skilled jobs turned into a car park.
The northern half of the northern Innovation Park Medway is set to be turned over to huge employer and unquestionably moral company BAE Systems. This will provide them with 620 parking spaces while their adjacent site undergoes significant redevelopment.
If successful, the planning application will see BAE use the land for four years during development. The application is a thing of beauty, full of the kind of corporate nonsense speak you’d expect for the development of empty land into a car park:
‘The car park will be temporary in nature and mimic the majority of the other car parks around the wider site to comply with the overall aesthetic nature of BAE Rochester and facilitate a holistic appearance.’
Wonderful. As long as we comply with the overall aesthetic of BAE and facilitate a holistic appearance, it’s hard to see any issues with any of this.
The move comes just two months after Medway Council changed their plans for Innovation Park Medway. After downgrading the plans for this end of the site from high-tech, high-skilled jobs to industrial and mid-tech units, we’ve now downgraded further to car parking. Since its inception, Medway Council has spent £33m on the Innovation Park Medway, and unless BAE are paying very generously for these spaces, it’s hard to imagine the council won’t be losing money here.
Auditing Medway
There is a particular section of the internet that is awash with ‘auditors’. Not the kind that checks your accounts, but an internet-based man (for it is nearly always men) with a video camera who goes to places you are technically allowed to film and tries to provoke a response. It’s a trend that started in the US but now has a sizeable community in the UK.
These people will often rock up to police stations, town halls, and places like migrant hotels and make a point to film from as many public areas in the vicinity until someone inevitably challenges them. Because they technically aren’t doing anything wrong, this provides them with fruitful content about how the state is trying to clamp down on the rights of the average person. It’s like when the worst person you know actually has a point and won’t shut up about it.
Auditing Britain is one of the largest channels on YouTube doing this sort of thing, and they decided to wander into Medway Council’s Gun Wharf headquarters and then act surprised when they got tackled for entering the private bit. This leads to a dispute with staff members and a customer in the lobby before they eventually leave and move outside about it for a while.
The whole thing feels incredibly annoying for all concerned, and the person conducting the ‘audit’ is clearly a dick trying to get a rise out of people. But the speed at which the Medway Council employees tell him that he isn’t allowed to film there without permission, something that legally doesn’t hold water, raises questions about how well-versed staff are in dealing with these people when they turn up.
Bank to open new branch in Chatham
No, you didn’t read that wrong, a bank plans to open a new branch in Medway. In a world where hundreds of banks close nationwide each year, news of a new one opening is unusual. So what’s going on?
Barclays has applied for planning permission to make alterations at Dockside Outlet Centre in Chatham to enable them to open a branch there. The proposals include the subdivision of the existing Clarks unit, which is moving to another unit in the centre, to allow the bank to open a full branch within the complex.
The plans include a branch with two counters, three self-service machines, many desks and seats, and a cash machine outside the centre, which will presumably be bad news for the one currently inside the centre that charges for transactions.
It is still unclear why Barclays would want to open a branch at an out-of-town shopping centre, but it perhaps isn’t wholly surprising. The landlord of their existing Chatham High Street branch appears to want them out so the building can be redeveloped, and the location was vandalised at least three times during 2024, at least some of which seemed to be protest activity by Palestine Action, who wanted the firm to divest from Israeli weapons companies.
The move to Dockside comes as the complex undergoes a significant transformation, with middle-class Wetherspoons a-like Sotto Lounge set to open in a couple of weeks, and McDonald’s set to follow later in the summer.
In brief
🗣️ There’s a Councillor Conduct Committee meeting being held this Thursday (8 May) to discuss a complaint made against a Medway councillor. We’d love to tell you more, but these things are entirely behind closed doors, with the press not even being allowed to attend meetings where councillor complaints are discussed.
🎾 Plans have been approved for three padel tennis courts to be built in the centre of Chatham. The site, behind the Tap n Tin, is a prime brownfield location in the centre of a rapidly densifying town, so it will now be used by a handful of people playing padel.
🚗 Greenfield’s Boot Fair in Upnor returned over the weekend, leading to two-hour queues through the Medway Tunnel and cars being abandoned on the dual carriageway outside the site. The boot fairs will now run every Sunday until September.
🚚 The owner of Regal van rentals has called for Bryant Road in Strood to be closed after three of his customers ignored the road signs and wrecked one of his vans driving under the railway bridge there. An alternate idea would be to only hire vans to people who can read road signs.
More Authority
In the second and final part of our two-part interview, Steven sat down with wife and husband Nik Vincent and Dan Abnett. Nik is a potter and writer and has worked with Dan on a number of books. They speak about what happened to Nik’s 144 pots, why Dan was thanked in the credits of Guardians of the Galaxy, AI scraping your work, and lots more.
“I have got very down and dirty on occasions and lost paragraphs”
In the second of a two-part interview, Steven speaks to wife and husband Nik Vincent and Dan Abnett. Nik is a potter and writer and has worked with Dan on a number of books. They speak about what happened to Nik’s 144 pots, why Dan was thanked in the credits of Guardians of the Galaxy, AI scraping your work, and lots more.
Coming up later this week: Tomorrow, we’ll be looking at Medway’s VE Day celebrations, on Friday, we’ll have our culture briefing edition, and on Sunday, we’ll be interviewing Medway Council Leader Vince Maple to mark the halfway point (in theory, anyway) of his time in office.
Footnotes
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Music that soundtracked the creation of this edition: An Argument With Myself by Jens Lekman, Jump Rope Gazers by The Beths, and Angles by Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip.
Good news that Dockside is getting a bank and let's hope Medway Council's officers, Councillors and MP Lauren Edwards, are persuading Barclays to keep a branch in Chatham. This town already has a number of busy banks with very helpful staff. I wonder if "Local Authority" can help find Medway Council's retail strategy for Chatham?