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Catch up with all the latest stories from across the county with Meghan Shaw.
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00:21Hello and welcome to Kent's Night, live here on KMTV.
00:25I'm Megan Shaw and here are your top stories on Tuesday the 14th of April.
00:31Water wars, South Eastwater boss faces a second grilling about Tunbridge Wells water outages late last year.
00:39It was something that I hadn't experienced at that level before.
00:42Fencing failure, almost £20,000 spent on a fence that proved ineffective at keeping out travellers as planned.
00:51The fencing is a deterrent, right? The fencing wasn't going to solve it. I made that clear last year.
00:55And moving in, Jeskins Country Park in Gravesend sees cows return to its fields.
01:01There are all benefits for the local community to be able to see cattle in their natural habitat and come
01:07and visit the cows here at Jeskins.
01:20And your top story tonight. David Hinton, Chief Executive of South Eastwater alongside a non-executive director of the company,
01:29were questioned once again by the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee about the two-week drinking water outage
01:36in Tunbridge Wells late last year.
01:38And reporter Neela Mahamed joins us live from Tunbridge now to tell us more about the questioning.
01:45So, Neela, I can see you there now. What's today's question been all about?
01:52So, Meg, what happened today is a select committee of MPs questioned David Hinton and other non-executive directors of
01:59South Eastwater about the outages that happened last December.
02:02And it's been described by many who viewed it as an absolute grilling. And so, for context, a select committee
02:07scrutinises what the government does.
02:09And it's made up of MPs from various different parties who are not government ministers or party spokespeople.
02:15They decide what to investigate and take evidence from various witnesses to produce a report which they send back to
02:20the government.
02:21There was a questioning of David Hinton back in January by the same committee who the Environment, Food and Rural
02:26Affairs Committee,
02:27and there has been a change of tone since then. Let's have a look at what was said.
02:31For the second time this year, David Hinton, the Chief Executive of South Eastwater, has been questioned by EFRA
02:38by the two-week water outage in Tunbridge Wells late last year.
02:42Around 24,000 South Eastwater customers did not have access to safe drinking water after a plant failure and were
02:50told to boil tap water when it did return.
02:53In January this year, Hinton rated the response to the water outage an 8 out of 10 when questioned by
02:59EFRA, to which many residents said he should have done more.
03:02We're a bit backwards in coming forwards. I think, you know, the CEO should have got out there on TV
03:09and informed the town.
03:12He should invest quite a lot of money in their local infrastructure, in their local water supply, the mains, the
03:22reservoirs, so this doesn't happen again.
03:24They need to look at their, they need to get their systems engineers on it and assess what went wrong,
03:32do a modification to their system so it doesn't happen again.
03:37And today, after pressures from MPs and EFRA, David Hinton conceded.
03:42I did get that wrong. It was something that I hadn't experienced at that level before. We're using consultants to
03:51really help us work out what our effective emergency playbook is, our crisis comms playbook is, what everyone's role in
03:59that playbook is.
04:00So that is a learning that we went through, went through the pain of getting it wrong.
04:04The chairman of South East Water, Chris Train, also admitted failure to their customers.
04:10You've told us already that it's your, part of your responsibility as a non-exec director to look to customer
04:20interests.
04:21Do you not think your customers deserve that degree of accountability from you?
04:26And that degree of accountability is that we, we accept that we failed in our primary duty.
04:36Water regulator Ofwat has proposed fining South East Water £22 million for the multiple water issues in Kent between 2020
04:44and 2023.
04:46Mr Hinton said that £600,000 has been put aside to compensate businesses that lost money during the water outages
04:53late last year.
04:54In a statement offered after his appearance today, David Hinton said,
04:58We apologise unreservedly to all our customers and recognise the serious impact this has had.
05:03In recognition of this, I have made the decision not to accept any bonus for the next year.
05:08We are taking direct action to change the way supply interruptions are managed.
05:12We are focused on delivering our long-term business plan while keeping customer bills affordable.
05:17Customers can be assured that we are working at pace to complete our full programme of works.
05:27And since the meeting this morning, MP Helen Whaley has described Mr Hinton's words as tone deaf,
05:32even saying the South East Water just don't get the impact that they've had and has even caught with his
05:37resignation,
05:38a desire that has been echoed by so many people since the outages in December.
05:41As I mentioned in the piece, Mr Hinton is planning a fund for £600,000 for any businesses financially impacted
05:48by the outages.
05:49But MP Mike Martin said that the local economy faced a loss of £18.6 million, called it a paltry
05:55sum,
05:56saying that it didn't touch the sides of the true financial damage that was inflicted.
06:00In a statement about the £600,000 funding, South East Water said,
06:06we understand how incredibly difficult and disruptive the water supply issues are,
06:10and businesses are expected to have the relevant instruments cover,
06:14and we are incredibly sorry for the impact that this has had.
06:18Thanks so much for that report there, Nayla.
06:23Now, Ashford Port Health Authority has stopped over 200 tonnes of unsafe food entering the UK since November 2024.
06:31In just the past few weeks, more than 208,000 kilograms of food products have been seized and destroyed at
06:37the UK border
06:38after they were deemed unfit for human consumption.
06:41The items were intercepted by Ashford Port Health Authority due to issues such as incorrect documentation,
06:47improper storage and failure to meet UK health safety standards.
06:51And I spoke to Anthony Bauduc, Corporate Director of Health and Wellbeing at Ashford Port Health Authority,
06:56about this earlier today.
06:57What factors are driving the volume of unsafe imports that you're now seeing?
07:04I think, really, it's a truth that we never actually looked at everything that came from Europe before.
07:10That's a factor.
07:11Food is worth a lot of money, and because there were no checks for a long time,
07:14I suspect some of that has been exploited by people with nefarious kind of means, etc.
07:20So it's a joint thing there.
07:22But there are just generally more outbreaks of disease in Europe anyway,
07:25and now we are actually doing something about that.
07:28We are finding the goods.
07:29Are you all right to go into a bit more detail about what type of products,
07:33what type of foods are commonly being seized and the risk that these goods might pose?
07:39Yeah, absolutely.
07:40So the most common things that we come across would be pork that doesn't actually comply
07:44and there might be a risk with African swine fever or it isn't produced in a hygienic standard.
07:49Chicken products, there's a lot of problems with salmonella in certain chicken products.
07:53And fish, we often get fish that's out of temperature control.
07:56So even that doesn't have an infectious disease risk.
07:59In essence, the product itself wouldn't be fit for human consumption.
08:03They're the main things.
08:04And moving forward, kind of what further measures do you think are needed to strengthen the UK's food safety system?
08:11Well, I think there's two things there.
08:13I think now we've kind of got the beat on, as it's called, the broker target operating model up and
08:18running.
08:19We need to keep defining how we use that.
08:21We're using technology very effectively to make it less kind of pinch points at the border
08:26and get goods into the country much quicker and without great expense.
08:30We actually held our costs in Sevington this year and absorbed the inflationary costs there.
08:35I think we also need to keep hold of the kind of gains we've made with the rest of the
08:39world trading partners
08:40and really promote our own farming industry and export industry so that we've got a very good system.
08:45My own personal view, without any politics, is that the beat on that we invented should be reciprocated with European
08:51partners
08:51as it's a good modern step forward in border control.
08:56Thank you so much.
08:58Now, is it a bird?
08:59Is it a plane?
09:00No, it's a meteor.
09:02Science say a fireball was spotted in the skies above Kent last night at around half past midnight,
09:08so many people are likely to have missed it.
09:10But our reporter Maisie Walker, if you didn't stay up late,
09:13has been finding out how many people across the county caught a glimpse of the dinosaur's worst enemy.
09:19Let's have a look.
09:30Scientists say a fireball seen across much of Europe, including Kent, was actually a meteor.
09:36This footage captures the moment it travelled across the sky before plunging into the North Sea.
09:42Early this morning you might have noticed a shooting star making its way across Europe,
09:47putting on a truly space-tacular show even visible from here in Kent.
09:52The meteor was visible at around 12.25am on Monday, meaning many people may have missed it.
09:58I headed out to ask Kent locals if they managed to catch a glimpse.
10:02No, I missed it.
10:04And my boy wants to be an astrophysicist when he's older so he would have loved to have seen it
10:08as well.
10:09I actually didn't have, I had no idea there was a meteor to be honest.
10:12I didn't see it, didn't hear anything.
10:15No, I was not aware actually of the event and what had happened,
10:19but it is incredible that something of this scale and something so big and eventful happened in the local town
10:27that I live in.
10:27Charlotte Bays, Secretary of the UK Fireball Alliance, said the meteor had actually been spotted across Northern Europe,
10:35but finding any material from it was unlikely.
10:38A meteor is a bright streak of light you see when a small piece of space rock enters the Earth's
10:44atmosphere
10:44and starts to burn up, often called a shooting star.
10:48And speaking of, we also asked people what they'd wish for if they saw one.
10:53I want to say world peace, but I collect Pokemon cards, so I would say a decent supply of Pokemon
11:00in shops would be what I'd wish for.
11:02I'd wish for Mill to get promoted to the Premier League. That's all I want. I'll die a happy man
11:07if that happens.
11:08Maybe just success and for everything to go well in life.
11:12So whether you're a spaced enthusiast or not, there's something pretty amazing about seeing something that's travelled from beyond our
11:19world.
11:20Maisie Walker for KMTV, Rochester.
11:25Now it's time for a quick break, but still to come, we'll be talking to Tudor Price about the latest
11:30developments in the Iran war on oil prices
11:32and the UK potentially adopting EU single market rules under new legislation.
11:36What does that mean, you might ask? I thought the same, so we asked him.
11:40And we'll also be hearing about the weather, no stars included.
11:44After the break, we'll catch you later after a few short minutes. Goodbye.
15:10Hello and welcome back to Kent's Night Live here on KMTV.
15:15Swaleborough Council are facing criticism after building a fence to stop travellers, which didn't work.
15:20The fence, which cost the council £18,000, was put up on the wreck of Milton Regis to stop people
15:27unlawfully residing on it,
15:29but the attempt proved unsuccessful.
15:31So I went down to the site to find out all about how the locals feel about it.
15:36For a fence solely designed to keep travellers from pitching on Milton Regis Recreation Ground,
15:43you might expect it to do its one job.
15:46But Swaleborough Council's latest attempt to stop settlements seems to have been ineffective.
15:53And this is the fence that surrounds the entirety of Milton Regis Rec.
15:57I'm very short, but as you can see, it's not very tall and it cost a whopping £18,000 for
16:03the council to build.
16:04And its sole purpose really was to keep you from driving across the wreck and setting on it as well.
16:10But has it really been that effective?
16:12On Sunday, at least ten caravans have parked up on the section of grounds usually used for football matches.
16:20It's understood the council has CCTV footage of someone removing one of the bollards, allowing vehicles to enter the site.
16:29And although the travellers have since left, the question for councillors is what to do next.
16:35£18,000 is an awful lot of money for this fence. It doesn't seem to have worked.
16:43Possibly not, but my view is that they were coming in at this top end last year. They haven't come
16:50in at this end so far.
16:51The fencing is a deterrent, right? The fencing wasn't going to solve it. I made that clear last year.
16:56They can very easily knock it down. If they knock it down, which they have done, they cause criminal damage
17:02and it makes it easier for them to get removed.
17:05This is the fourth time travellers have made camp on the wreck within the last year.
17:10And although many residents angered by the incursion didn't want to speak on camera,
17:15those who did understood that this community also needs somewhere to live.
17:19We just want them to find a place where councillors can give them somewhere to go, but not on our
17:30wrecks or causing any trouble.
17:33There's a lot of money and when I see it going up, eventually, once I heard it was going up,
17:38I thought,
17:38well, even I can come round and dig them out and, you know, and bring the car and the car
17:43down in here.
17:43I don't want them on the park because I obviously have two dogs as well and I like to walk
17:47the dogs in the park.
17:48So if they integrate it better, maybe I wouldn't have so much of an issue, but they can cause a
17:54little bit of friction.
17:55But while residents remain on the fence about the travellers, Swellborough Council faced mounting pressures to hit it out of
18:04the park on their latest attempt to secure the wreck.
18:07Megan Shaw for KMTV in Milton.
18:11Now, a Dartford thief has avoided prison after stealing chocolate and other items over a seven month period.
18:19Stephen Clark, aged 52, took £1,300 worth of rubber mats from Darren Valley Hospital.
18:25He also stole over £60 worth of Cadbury chocolate, interfered with cars and threatened a woman with a knife.
18:32Magistrates initially decided to jail wash for 12 weeks, but suspended the term for 12 months.
18:38He was ordered to attend rehabilitation sessions and pay for compensation for the stolen items amounting to £1,400.
18:48As the Iran war continues and the cost at the petrol pump continues to soar, it's hard to stay on
18:54top of what's happening with our wallets.
18:56And that's why I spoke to Tudor Price from the Invicta Chamber of Commerce earlier on today.
19:02So, first of all, Tudor, thanks so much for joining us once again.
19:06And today's major headline from the International Monetary Fund is that the UK is to face the biggest hit to
19:14growth from the Iran war of all the major economies.
19:17So, first of all, are you just all right to outline what does economic growth actually mean?
19:24So, the International Monetary Fund will measure economic growth in terms of the amount of goods that we sell, in
19:34other words, export and how much we buy into the balance of trade.
19:37That's sort of in a very simple form how it's being calculated.
19:41And what the IMF is saying is that this country in particular has struggled to sell lots of products.
19:49And therefore, it is sort of spending more on stuff coming in, less on stuff going out.
19:54And actually, that means that we are sort of going to be a little bit worse hit than many others
19:59around the rest of the world.
20:02I see. And do we know why is that the UK's growth is so vulnerable compared to other major economies
20:09as the war in the Middle East continues?
20:13Absolutely. Great question. And that really is what this all comes down to is a thing called energy security.
20:18So, we here in the UK, even though we have oil fields up in the North Sea, none of that
20:24oil is actually ours.
20:25It belongs to private companies and it's sold on the open market.
20:28What that means is we have to buy a lot of our fuel requirements, whether that's diesel, petrol, electricity.
20:35We normally have to sort of buy that in from overseas.
20:38And so, the price at which we sell stuff here in the UK is higher than it would be if
20:44you were to buy it from France or from Germany or from America.
20:47There's also been rumours that the UK could adopt EU single market rules under new legislation.
20:53But can you please explain to me what this actually means? Because it's all a bit lost on me.
20:59No, that's fine. So, it's more to do with sort of alignment and sort of consumer safety.
21:05So, most people will be familiar that when we were part of the European Union that you looked on a
21:11label of jam and it would have like a CE mark on the side of it, which meant basically that
21:15that product had met a whole host of food and consumer safety regulations.
21:21When we left the European Union, we started to create our own set of safety standards, which was a strange
21:32thing because actually any business here in the UK that wanted to sell their products into the European Union invariably
21:39had to comply with all the labeling regulations and food safety and health and safety aspects.
21:45So, in a bizarre sort of way, we've been doing that anyway.
21:48Thank you so much for joining us, Tudor, and for sharing some insight there.
21:55A popular seafront attraction in Folkestone will not show England's opening World Cup matches due to concerns of the late
22:02kickoff times.
22:03The goods yard at Folkestone Harbour Arm in previous years has been a chance for many fans to watch international
22:09tournaments on the big screen.
22:11But bosses have chosen not to show England's group stage matches at the 2026 World Cup.
22:16The tournament, held this summer in North America, has meant that England's first three games don't kick off until at
22:22least 9pm UK time.
22:25Still on football, after three years in charge, the Maidstone United manager, George Ellacoby, has announced he'll be stepping down
22:32at the end of the season.
22:33After stints at Colchester Wolves and Nottingham Forest, a former defender joined the Stones in 2019, becoming their caretaker manager
22:39in 2023,
22:40leading them through a famous run through to the FA Cup fifth round, chalking up wins against Barrow, Stevenage and
22:46Coventry.
22:47Oliver Ash, one of the club's owners, described the choice of Ellacoby as managers as one of the best decisions
22:52they've made.
22:54And for people living around Gravesend, they'll get to find out the meaning of the phrase until the cows come
22:59home,
23:00when the cattle literally return to Jeskins Country Park, as Finn McDermid has been finding out.
23:05Jeskins Community Woodland near Cobham is mostly used to seeing dogs on its pathways, but after almost £50,000 worth
23:13of funding,
23:14they've reintroduced 26 cows across six fields to help keep the grass short and visitors interested.
23:20Although the cattle mean that Jeskins won't have to spend money on cutting the grass, the new neighbours aren't just
23:25cash cows,
23:26as they also help care for the landscape that they're living in.
23:29We don't have to cut and collect the fields anymore, which is one of our biggest costs to the site.
23:35And that will allow us to reuse that money, our budget, to work on other projects across the site.
23:43We also, it's a real benefit to the local community to be able to see cattle in their natural habitat
23:49and come and visit the cows here at Jeskins.
23:52Now, these are very curious cows. Hello there. These are, in fact, beef cows.
23:56And beef cows consume between 10 to 20 kilograms of grass a day.
24:00And that's nothing compared to the dairy cows. Hello there. This one's called Millie.
24:04She's not a dairy cow. Dairy cows consume anywhere from 70 to 100 kilograms.
24:09Millie is currently eating my shoe. Anywhere to 70 to 100 kilograms of grass a day.
24:14So they're very efficient lawnmowers. They're very good at conservation grazing.
24:18But what exactly is that? How does it help the cows? And how does it help Mother Nature?
24:23It's hugely beneficial if you can actually improve the soil structure, your species of grass and wildflowers that are in
24:30it.
24:30Because they're all beneficial to the type of livestock you could be grazing.
24:34No one really wants to use chemicals or anything like that nowadays.
24:37And we've actually been lucky enough to be working on this project and actually learnt quite a bit to go
24:42along with it.
24:42Because we're getting fed information from Craig and his colleagues.
24:45Soon it won't just be cows munching their way through the fields, but sheep as well.
24:50So to help make some room for them, a team of volunteers have been clearing trees and branches from the
24:54site.
24:55We have a volunteer session every Tuesday. And today we're clearing the orchard out.
25:00This is one of our seven orchards on site, ready for the sheep that are coming later this week.
25:05So we've had the cows in, now we've got the sheep, which is really exciting.
25:08So bringing in some more people on site. But it's a beautiful day for it as well, which is great.
25:13So yeah, really enjoying it.
25:14While the cows are surrounded by fencing, it's designed to keep them in rather than other animals out.
25:20So dog walkers are being asked to make sure their pets are on a lead and don't disrupt the working
25:24cows who belong to a local farmer.
25:26Jesskins usually sees plenty of visitors walking through its woodland and has even had a 10% increase of them,
25:32which could go up, especially now that the cows have come home.
25:35Finn McDermid for KMTV in Cobham.
25:38And now it's time for the weather.
25:43It's looking like a cool night tonight across the county. Average temperature 12 degrees around the board.
25:51Those in the east can expect some drizzle. Tomorrow morning, temperatures remaining 12 degrees.
25:55Only Tunbridge dropping to 11. Drizzle in Dartford and Tunbridge again.
25:59Into the evening, a rising temperature across the county at highs of 16.
26:03Winds winds remain consistent. Canterbury and Margate can expect some sun and your outlook.
26:0816 on Thursday, 18 on Friday, 17 on Saturday. Outlook across the board being overcast with a bit of sun.
26:23And you've been watching Kent tonight live here on KMTV and there's more news made just for you and Kent
26:29throughout the evening.
26:31Don't forget and keep up to date with our latest news across the county by logging on to our website,
26:35kmtv.co.uk.
26:37We'll see you at 8pm with a roundup of the headlines. But until then, have a lovely evening. We'll see
26:42you later.
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