- 1 day ago
Catch up with all the latest political news across the county with Rob Bailey.
This week marked one year of Reform UK at Kent County Council, and we were joined by Cllr Brian Collins from Reform, Cllr Harry Rayner from the Conservatives, and Cllr Mike Sole representing the Liberal Democrats.
This week marked one year of Reform UK at Kent County Council, and we were joined by Cllr Brian Collins from Reform, Cllr Harry Rayner from the Conservatives, and Cllr Mike Sole representing the Liberal Democrats.
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00:22Welcome to the Kent Politics Show on KMTV, I'm Rob Bailey and it's exactly one year
00:27since reform swept into power at Kent County Council. Party leader Nigel Farage declared
00:32the victory a new dawn for British politics. Tonight, we're joined by senior Kent councillors
00:37to ask what we've really learned from reform's first year in office. But first, here's local
00:42democracy reporter Olly Leder to take us back through a dramatic year in Kent politics.
00:47It's been extraordinary, chaotic, interesting. There are plenty of ways to describe reform
00:53UK's first year in power here at County Hall since beating the Conservatives in last year's
00:59local elections. It's been a bumper 12 months with some highs, some lows, and lots of political
01:11drama.
01:20So how have things changed in the last year at Kent County Council? And what can we expect
01:25next at the UK's largest local authority?
01:31There haven't been any successes. Reform have lost control of the budget. There's a £45 million
01:36overspend in the last financial year. They've had a bad off-stead on the services that we're
01:42providing to children who are leaving care.
01:45I am there to serve the people who elected me and my fellow members into Kent County Council.
01:52Even the ones who didn't vote for us, we're still there to serve them. That is my absolute
01:55number one focus.
01:5745% of people here in Headcorn voted for Reform UK at the last set of local elections.
02:04How do they think the party they voted for are getting on one year into power?
02:10I'd give them a seven or an eight. Yeah, say an eight.
02:14I would say 50-50. I would hate to give it a real number because you wouldn't want to know.
02:26And we've got a full house here in the studio. Joining me is Reform's Deputy Leader in Kent,
02:31Brian Collins, Conservative Leader at Kent County Council, Harry Rayner, and Liberal Democrat Deputy
02:36Leader at KCC, Mike Soule. Thank you so much for coming in. Well, I suppose we should say happy
02:43anniversary, Brian. It's been a dramatic year, as we've heard there. And I think one of the things
02:49that's come out as people have been reacting to what we've learned from the year in reform,
02:52a lot of the other parties have said that there's been a kind of tribalistic sense in the last year,
02:58that reform have been very much kind of led by trying to be the shop window for the National Party
03:05and a lot of focus nationally on what's been going on here. Do you think sometimes that might
03:09have been a distraction from the day-to-day work in Kent?
03:14I think it depends on who's saying it. Yes. I mean, my colleagues here and other opposition
03:20people, they're always going to try and find fault in what we're doing. We've been concentrating 100%
03:27on the County Council work. Now, obviously, that's going to have a bearing on National,
03:33because if we can prove that we can succeed at county level, well, then that puts faith in the
03:39electorate for us to go forward and succeed at national level. And that's what people want.
03:46Harry, you're leader of the Conservatives, the party that was in power until reform came in.
03:52A lot of people were predicting that under reform, the wheels would fall off. Some people were saying
03:56as quickly as six months, Kent County Council could be bankrupt. The fact is that the wheels haven't
04:00fallen off, have they? Do you think that the strategy of accusing reform of chaos all the time
04:04is not paying off for opposition people? Oh, no, I definitely wouldn't agree with that. I mean,
04:09to a large extent, the wheels have fallen off. A 57 majority started off this time last year. Now
04:15they're down to 47. To lose 10 members in 12 months, isn't the wheels falling off? They only need to
04:23lose another six more. And before you know it, they haven't even got a majority. So let's be realistic
04:28about this. No one who is running the show properly expels nine of their own members within
04:35four months of turning up at County Hall. First time it's ever been seen there. And if you're
04:40asking me, is the show being run properly there? No, it isn't. They are clearly inexperienced,
04:47clearly in difficulties. And those difficulties will grow even further with the impact of the
04:53situation in the Gulf as we proceed. I'm sure, Brian, you want to come back. But before you do,
04:59just ask Mike, I mean, your kind of take on what have we learned in a year from a year
05:05of reform
05:05leadership? Well, it's been pretty much a roller coaster year with lots of ups and downs. I mean,
05:10some of the significant ups, obviously, council tax going up, despite what we were led to believe
05:15would happen. We've seen budget overspends going up, you know, nearly 50 million pound overspend
05:23on adult social services. The budget really does look tricky. And when we look at things like what's
05:29come down, well, flags have come down, you've taken down the Ukrainian flag, you know, that was there
05:35standing up to Putin and now it's come down. The pride flag that we so, you know, we fly every
05:40June,
05:41that's come down. Potholes, a number of potholes, they've certainly gone up. It really is ups and
05:46downs, but no real positives in this. Reform has shown us that they can win the election based on
05:52slogans and soundbites, but you can't govern on that basis. And that's just not what they've done.
05:57Right, there's a few things to address there. I mean, the wheels falling off has definitely not
06:02happened. It's common knowledge. There was a few ripples in the pond during the autumn last year.
06:07We haven't got as many members now as we did have, but we're stronger. We may be smaller,
06:13but we're more united. I can tell you now, over recent months, I've never known us to be more
06:19united as a group than we are now. But I think what we need to concentrate on is let's look
06:25at
06:26the results that we've achieved. I mean, we've only been there for less than a year in theory,
06:31because we didn't actually take office till about the 8th of May. We then had weeks of getting to
06:38groups with a massive organisation. And hopefully in a minute, we can discuss some of the achievements
06:44that we have made. I mean, I'm going to mention one now. Well, one thing I do want to address,
06:48and I've heard this several times recently from some of my opposition colleagues, that there's an
06:53overspend of about 45, 46 million pounds. That's incorrect. The actual overspend is more like early
07:01twenties. We're at the stage in the budget process where the official figures are now being confirmed
07:07for the year end. So I can tell you now, this nonsense that some of my colleagues are talking
07:13about, about an overspend in the forties, is absolutely incorrect. It's early twenties,
07:18and we'll be able to confirm that in the next few weeks. As concerns of adult service overspend,
07:26in the last few months, we've actually reduced the amount of overspend. So we're actually making
07:31some really good process. And I think for the fact, brand new administration, first year, a lot of
07:38bedding in had to take place for the first few months. A lot of training had to go on. We've
07:43actually,
07:43all things considered, had a really amazing year. And there's one more little gem I want to drop in,
07:50long-term debt. One of the things we promised we would tackle when we took over was long-term.
07:55Now, Harry's shaking his head there. Let's get the facts out here. We have, the council has now
08:00reduced its long-term debt since May last year by 142 million pounds. Now, Harry's going to try and
08:06make out that this was predicted payoffs. No, it wasn't. There was a certain amount of maturing debt.
08:12The amount of maturing debt was about 30 million pounds. So we really have made an impact.
08:18We've carried out our promises. Council tax that my colleague here has mentioned,
08:22this has been one of the biggest things that people have tried to knock reform on,
08:26is that we promised we were going to reduce council tax. Let's get this correct. We said we
08:32would reduce taxes. We didn't put a time scale on it. We certainly didn't say that we would be
08:38reducing council tax in the first year. I'll stop you there, though, because, I mean,
08:43Nigel Farage declared it a new dawn. People who were voting reform had been led to expect that a
08:48new broom was going to rush through and that they would see an immediate impact. The idea was that
08:52local government was being run by people who were either incompetent or were just guilty of enormous
08:58amounts of waste and reform were going to come in, identify all these problems and fix them.
09:02And a year later, it'd be fair to say, a lot of people that voted reform on issues that really
09:07matter to people, things like the state of the roads, things like the fact the council tax goes
09:11up and the cost of living issues, the KCC can help to have an impact in, might be looking at
09:16it now
09:16and thinking, well, it's not really been a new dawn, has it? Has anything really changed?
09:20Well, for a fact, we've fixed 15,000 more potholes this year than was fixed last year. So I think
09:25that's an improvement. We've got a new big contractor starting actually next week.
09:30Um, there's new guarantees. It's a whole total new contract. It's going to be a completely
09:35different contract than what was there before. We're going to have guarantees on repairs.
09:40So it's not going to happen in the first week. I mean, this is, you know, decades of
09:46underspending, neglect, wrong types of policy on the highway.
09:50I can see Harry shaking his head. I want to bring something else in.
09:52I mean, let's, let's be realistic. Uh, Brian's, uh, at, at best misleading over debt. Uh, what he's
09:59including is what's showing on the balance sheet. What he isn't talking about is what the, the debt
10:04that's running up off the balance sheet, the, uh, the safety valve funding, 75 million pounds
10:11additional debt this year, another 75 million coming up in the financial year, just starting
10:18155 million pounds worth of additional debt, not shown on the balance sheet in anybody else's
10:24terms. They'd say it was fiddling the books and that's what's going on at KCC at the moment. It's
10:29not being properly recorded. Uh, and, and the situation, and can I just say also with regard to
10:34the, uh, the, the council tax position, we were told that we're going to be no increases. There's a
10:403.75% increase, uh, this year. Uh, and it's, uh, we are likely to end up with another substantial
10:47increase because they are already, you can already see that costs are outstripping the budget for
10:53the start of this year already. And we're only a month in. Where do you see these costs that are
10:58outstripping the budget? Cause I haven't seen them. Straight off diesel. Uh, diesel's not in our
11:03budget. You say this is diesel. Is it? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. What are you telling
11:07me?
11:07The KCC doesn't buy back diesel? Of course it does. Let's go on the facts and figures that are
11:12actually in front, uh, front of us. There's nothing. You know what? I, I was quiet. I was
11:17quiet while you spoke. Yeah. Okay. And you show the same respect here, Brian. While I'm talking,
11:22you don't interrupt. You've got to be factual. Do you know what? I listened to your so-called facts.
11:27I'm now putting the facts from our side and you be quiet while I speak. And then when you're
11:31asking the correct facts forward, I'm putting exactly that forward. It's quite clear that if
11:37everybody else is paying additional for diesel, so a KCC. And the point I'm making is there
11:42is no flexibility in the budget announced and agreed in February. We've got to go to a break
11:47there, but we'll pick this up as soon as we come back. Stay with us.
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15:06Welcome back to the Kent Politics Show on KMTV and I'm joined this week by Brian Collins
15:10the Deputy Leader of Reform at Kent County Council, Mike Soule of the Kent County Council
15:15Liberal Democrats and Harry Rayner the Leader of the Conservative Group at KCC and before
15:20we went to the break we were talking about Kent County Council's finances, the biggest
15:24UK local authority and one which reform came to power saying that they would sweep through
15:29finding lots of savings and obviously the big part of that was what was called DOLJ, the
15:35Department of Local Government Efficiency inspired by Elon Musk which has struggled sometimes
15:41to articulate its successes. I know just before we went to the break Mike you were wanting
15:45to come in on the question of whether or not the financial stewardship had been good. What
15:51did you want to... Well DOLJ was just a headline. Those so-called savings have not materialised.
15:58If they had materialised you would have been able to keep council tax down which you clearly
16:01haven't. We've seen extra expenditure on things like political assistance for the reform group.
16:08Well that's turned out to be a great success hasn't it? It didn't stay in post very long. He's now
16:12gone
16:13off to try and win the election elsewhere. We've seen increases in the cost of bus passes. Massive
16:21increase. Ten times inflation busting increase for those on low incomes to get their children to school.
16:28We've seen the potholes Brian mentioned. May have filled more potholes but go out your front door, drive
16:35around. Look at the number of potholes there boasting how many you've done but they're still there.
16:39They're still there. People are still complaining about potholes and it's nothing to be proud of to have a
16:4420 million pound overspend and saying isn't that better than a 40 million pound overspend.
16:48It's still a massive overspend and the finances of this council are out of control and we are heading
16:54nearer and nearer to oblivion. I mean thank goodness we've got local government reorganisation coming down the line
17:00because if it wasn't we've definitely got it. You've wasted thousands of pounds on a scheme for local
17:07government reorganisation for Kent that has absolutely no chance at all of being accepted by government.
17:12We know that we're going to have either three or four unitary councils in Kent. No chance of it being
17:18won.
17:18Thousands of pounds wasted on that that could have been spent on services for our residents.
17:23I agree with you. Totally agree with you. Local government reorganisation. Total waste of time.
17:30So that's one thing we're unified on. Let's address this overspend. In the first year we took over
17:35we inherited basically what the Conservative administration had left us which was their budget
17:41proposals. 130 million of savings had to be made. We've actually achieved about a hundred million of that.
17:48Now I would say that some of those forecasts because this is how the council works. It's totally on
17:55forecasts. It's predictions and things like that. Let's get back to this long-term debt. Because of
18:01this long-term debt that has been lowered in this first 12 months that's now saving just under 1.2
18:08million pounds in debt interest payments. Now Harry wants to criticise long-term loan policy. I've been asked by
18:17many people how on earth did the council get into 732 million pounds of long-term debt. And that was
18:27under your
18:27administration. Maybe we can have an answer on that. The answer is it wasn't all under the previous
18:33Conservative administration. It's accumulated over many years. Over 30 or 40 years.
18:37And you could have paid that off. Going back, they were arrangements with the government where the
18:44government insisted they would only give us money as funding going back to 2005, 2008. The
18:50Blair administration, that's how they funded then with soft arrangements for repayment. Subsequent
18:57governments then reneged on that arrangement and we were left with an agreement with one government and a
19:03retraction from another in the Brown administration for example. And we were now stuck, we were then stuck
19:09with high debt. However, let me just point this out. Had the money not been repaid, actually the
19:15KCC would have been 2 million pounds better off because of the money that it was getting on interest
19:20in the Treasury. No, that's totally incorrect.
19:22Let's have the figures then. If you're saying that, let's have figures. Because this is just supposition.
19:30And I can tell you that a lot of this has reduced impact on the revenue budget. Revenue budget is
19:37what
19:37you need to provide services. So let's have figures.
19:42But the money you paid off that long-term debt with came out of the council reserves, didn't it?
19:46So essentially the rainy day fund for the council has suffered in order to get a short-term win.
19:50The reserves have just gone back up to about 6% at the moment. The ideal situation for council reserves,
19:57they should be somewhere between 5% and 10%. And if you look at our budget forecast for this year,
20:03there are more plans to put money back into reserves. So we're on quite a stable financial plan.
20:09Not at all. The reserves are perilously low now. What you've effectively done is taking money out of a savings
20:14account, like you might do at home, to pay off your mortgage.
20:17And that money that could be used... Because the interest benefit... Don't keep interrupting.
20:21Don't keep interrupting. I can't have wrong facts given.
20:24I'm sorry, you can. You sit there, you listen, and then you reply.
20:28This is typical of what we're seeing at KCC now. I've talked about all the ups and downs.
20:32One thing that has gone down is the quality of debate and the quality of respect at Kent County Council.
20:37Some of the meetings are more like a football match now with the way that we form Act.
20:41Lots of cheering. I'll address that.
20:45We had our disagreements with the Conservative group, but we dealt with them in a respectful way based on facts.
20:51We had differences of policy. We certainly didn't agree with everything, but we sorted things out respectfully.
20:59What we get at Kent County Council now is abuse and jeering, and it's just not what you should expect.
21:06I've got to just question you about that. I'll just ask you a question about that, because obviously, famously, last
21:11month, members of the Liberal Democrat walked out of a cabinet meeting.
21:16The whole opposition walked out.
21:17The whole opposition walked out. And there is a sense of this tribalism that we talked about in the first
21:24half, this sense of division that is there.
21:26But do you think it serves the people of Kent to act that way as well? Did you think walking
21:29out was the appropriate way?
21:31There was a by-election.
21:35You asked a question of the opposition. Don't let them keep interrupting.
21:38When there's a by-election, because of PERDA rules, you should not have debates in the council chamber that are
21:45over party political issues.
21:48A motion was brought forward on immigration. Immigration is the one thing that reform bang on about all the time.
21:56How on earth can you have a debate about immigration without talking about party politics?
22:02And as soon as we started to bring anything in, you know, mention the Labour government, mention reform, mention anything,
22:09we were shut down by the chairman.
22:10We were not given the opportunity of debate. And without the opportunity to debate, what was the point of being
22:15there?
22:15That should not have been on the agenda. Let me also say that actually, KCC cannot have any impact on
22:22immigration.
22:23It's a home office matter. And trying to debate it in KCC is simply waving red flags.
22:33It doesn't cut any mustard because they can't do anything. And that was the simple impact.
22:39What they were trying to do was impact on the Cliftonville election.
22:43Well, it backfired on them because the Greens got in and reform lost a seat.
22:48And this is continuing. Now what reform wants us to do, proposals coming forward, starting off meetings with the law
22:54of prayer,
22:55ending up standing up to sing the national anthem.
22:57I mean, concentrate on getting things done for the people of Kent, not this performance politics.
23:04Can I come back on some of these points?
23:06You can come back.
23:06Right. First of all, you said about, we don't want to have debate.
23:09As our friend here has highlighted, you were walked out of the chamber.
23:13You can't have a debate if you're not there.
23:14We weren't allowed a debate because every time we started this week, we were shut down.
23:18You were allowed to have a debate.
23:21Now, on the subject of Cliftonville, which my colleague over there has mentioned, our motion for the illegal immigration was
23:29actually put forward to the monitoring officer.
23:31And that can be fact checked before the Cliftonville election was announced.
23:35So you're incorrect on that one.
23:36This had been on the agenda for that meeting long before the Cliftonville election was announced.
23:42So, yes, we're all for debate, but if you're not there, you can't debate.
23:46How on earth can we have a debate when, as soon as we start to speak about anything, we're told,
23:51shut up, sit down?
23:52That's not a debate.
23:53I don't think you were told to shut up and sit down.
23:55I think that's incorrect.
23:57I was told quite clearly by the chairman to stop speaking and attacking the reform budget, which is part of
24:05the process that we do.
24:06That was the fact of the matter, Brian.
24:09The chairman, with the monitoring officer sitting just a few feet away, clearly made a statement before the meeting started.
24:16But because of Perda, there couldn't be political matters raised.
24:20That applied to everybody, including the reform members.
24:24But certain members of the opposition were not content to abide by that.
24:29So they decided to throw their teddies out of the pram and they walked out of the chamber.
24:33That's not true.
24:34The opportunity for debate was there, but you didn't want to take it.
24:38There's something quite interesting about this immigration emergency debate that you had.
24:42Because obviously one of the first things you did when you came in was to scrap the idea of a
24:46climate emergency.
24:47Yes, indeed.
24:48And an area where Kent County Council's policies can have an impact on the greenness of Kent, on your fleet,
24:57on some of the costs that KCC has in terms of transitioning away from expensive petrol, that kind of stuff.
25:02You said that that was political showboating, effectively.
25:05But isn't the same thing true of the immigration emergency that you tried to declare last month?
25:10No, not at all.
25:11I mean, my friend here said that, you know, reformer obsessed with immigration.
25:16Well, when you say obsessed, I think the majority of people in this country, as may well be demonstrated this
25:22Thursday, although they're local elections, the majority of people in this country are very concerned about immigration.
25:29So what we're doing at a county level and national level, we are standing up for what the residents, the
25:37population of this country are concerned about.
25:39And that is what we're there to do.
25:40And the fact that you wouldn't stay and debate it, and you had every opportunity to debate it, is a
25:47poor show, I feel.
25:48The answer is really simple.
25:50The terms of the Constitution, the KCC, do not permit the closure of speakers speaking when attacking the political opposition.
26:02What should have happened there properly is that time-limited motion should never have come forward, which was the original
26:11proposal of the monitoring officer.
26:13She wrote to us on the Monday before and said, we are not going to permit this situation, and subsequently
26:20was browbeaten by the leadership at reform to change her mind.
26:24That's the fact of the matter.
26:26I'll actually correct that.
26:28It was actually one of the Conservative members that contacted the Electoral Commission to complain about the motion.
26:34It was put in front of the monitoring officer.
26:37The monitoring officer decided.
26:39The rest is history.
26:40That's all we've got time for on The Politics Show tonight.
26:42Thank you to all of my guests for joining us.
26:44We'll be back next week.
26:45We'll see you then.
26:57We'll see you then.
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