KCC balances the books. For one year.

Good morning, and welcome back to your Monday Kent Current.

We hope you managed a decent weekend, even if Storm Goretti had other ideas. After a run of freezing weather to start the year, this one was more about wind, rain and fallen trees than icy pavements, with parts of the county dealing with flooding, structural damage, and travel disruption.

We start today at County Hall, where Kent County Council has technically balanced its £1.6bn budget for the year ahead, but only by dipping into reserves and selling off assets. On paper, the numbers add up. In reality, the council is already warning that the real crunch is still to come, with a £95m funding gap opening up over the next two years and adult social care continuing to dominate spending.

Elsewhere, tens of thousands of homes were left without water over the weekend, Deal Pier has been closed indefinitely after storm damage, and Ashford International marked its 30th birthday, still waiting for the return of international trains.

Let’s get into it.

How KCC balanced its £1.6bn budget and why the hard part is still to come

Kent County Council has balanced its £1.6bn budget for next year only by selling assets and raiding reserves, while warning of a looming £95m funding gap over the following two years.

Reform’s first full budget at County Hall includes a 3.99% council tax rise, 1% below the government cap. But buried in the council’s own budget papers is the reality that the books are balanced using £25m of one-off money. That includes £9m from capital receipts and £16m from reserves that are now deemed 'no longer necessary.' The council itself admits those fixes will have to be replaced with permanent savings in future years.

In other words, this is a bridging budget. It buys time. It does not solve the problem.

For most households, it will mean paying around £67 more a year on their Kent County Council bill for a Band D property, with no guarantee that the council’s finances are now on stable ground.

The scale of the problem

KCC’s total planned spending next year is £1.65bn, up 7.6% on this year. Nearly three-quarters of that is now swallowed by care services.

Adult social care alone will cost £787m in 2026 to 27, an 11% increase in a single year and 47.8% of the entire council budget. Children’s services will cost a further £421m, up 7.7%. Together, care services account for more than £1.2bn of KCC’s annual spending.

The council says it inherited a difficult financial situation and is now stabilising its finances.

“When this administration took office, the council was facing a very serious financial situation,” said KCC leader Linden Kemkaran in the authority’s budget statement. “KCC was saddled with more than £700 million of debt, around £84,000 was being spent every day on interest alone, and pressures on vital services were continuing to grow.”

But the draft budget shows that adult social care remains the organisation's single biggest pressure.

Of the £179.5m increase in spending next year, £89.8m comes from adult social care alone. That includes £37.7m to cover the full-year impact of this year’s overspends, £25.3m from rising demand, £15.8m from cost pressures and £9.9m from price inflation.

How the budget is being held together

The council describes the budget as 'balanced.' Technically, it is. But only because of a series of one-off measures that cannot be repeated year after year.

The draft plan relies on £9m from asset sales and capital receipts to fund day-to-day spending, and on £16m from raiding earmarked reserves that are now considered surplus to requirements.

The budget papers are explicit that these are temporary fixes and state that the one-off measures will need to be replaced by sustainable solutions in future years.

The council is also rebuilding its general reserve after drawing it down to cover previous overspends. But the plan does not include any allowance for further overspend this year. If 2025/26 ends in the red again, reserves will fall further.

The Green Party says the administration is sacrificing long-term stability to keep council tax below the maximum.

In its budget statement, the party said Reform had “raided reserves and sold the family silver” in order to balance the books, relying on “unsustainable diversions of capital receipts from property assets they have disposed of in order to fund expenditure or bolster the General Reserve.”

The hidden funding trap

There is also a political gamble embedded in the 3.99% council tax rise.

The government’s new Fair Funding formula assumes councils raise taxes to the maximum level allowed without triggering a referendum. That assumption is built into how much funding each authority is deemed to have.

By choosing to go below the cap, KCC risks losing around £10m a year in future funding.

In its statement, the Green Party warned that by setting council tax below the maximum, Reform had “shot itself in the foot” and risked creating a “potential £30m shortfall over the course of the Medium Term Financial Plan.”

Reform, however, says it has deliberately chosen to keep council tax lower than many other authorities.

“A key element of the draft budget proposals is the proposal for the council tax charge in 2026,” said Kemkaran. “Through sound financial management and efficiencies, the council has been able to keep the proposed increase below the level previously expected.”

The cliff edge ahead

Even with a £59m uplift in government funding next year, the council’s own medium-term financial plan shows large structural gaps opening up almost immediately.

For 2027/28, KCC forecasts a £52.6m shortfall between spending and funding. For 2028/29, the gap is a further £42.1m. No council tax rises are currently assumed beyond next year.

That means a potential £95m hole over two years, before accounting for any further shocks from adult social care, special educational needs, inflation, interest rates, or workforce costs.

In short, next year’s budget problem has not gone away. It has been postponed.

The politics

Reform leaders say they have already turned the council around and insist the budget represents a clear step forward.

“These draft budget proposals are responsible, transparent and focused on the people of Kent,” said deputy leader Brian Collins. “I am proud of the work that has gone into stabilising the council’s finances.”

The Green Party rejects that assessment, saying the administration has abandoned its commitment to paying off the current year’s overspend and is relying on risky assumptions about future savings.

“The budget has been ‘balanced’ by raiding reserves and relying on the unsustainable diversions of capital receipts from property assets they have disposed of,” the party said.

What happens next at County Hall

The draft budget will be scrutinised by committees throughout January before going to full council on 12 February.

With Reform holding 48 of the 81 seats at County Hall, it is expected to pass.

But this is not the end of the story. It is the beginning of a much bigger reckoning over how Kent pays for care, how it funds its services, and how long it can continue to paper over the cracks with asset sales and reserve raids.

Kent taxpayers are paying more this year and may be paying much more in the years ahead.

Water woes

Thousands of homes across Kent remain affected by water supply problems after Kent County Council declared a major incident following a weekend of disruption. Around 30,000 properties across the South East have been impacted, with ten postcodes in Kent still experiencing outages or low pressure, including Tunbridge Wells, Canterbury, Maidstone and Headcorn. Bottled water stations remain open across the county, and some households have been told supplies may not return until Tuesday. Several schools have closed, and emergency arrangements are now in place to protect essential services.

South East Water has blamed a combination of Storm Goretti, freezing weather, burst water mains, low reservoir levels and a power cut at one of its pumping plants. The company says the cold snap triggered an outbreak of leaks across its network, leaving drinking water storage tanks running low and reducing its ability to treat water at the normal rate. The latest failure comes just weeks after 24,000 homes in Tunbridge Wells and surrounding villages lost supply before Christmas.

Elsewhere in Kent, Southern Water says customers in Medway, Sittingbourne and Thanet remain in supply for now, but has warned that recent storms, freezing conditions and a power outage have lowered reservoir levels and increased the risk of disruption in the coming days. As a precaution, bottled water has been delivered to vulnerable customers on its Priority Services Register, while engineers work around the clock to keep taps flowing and prevent any knock-on outages across the rest of the county.

Two big reads

1️⃣ The Telegraph has assessed Reform's running of Kent County Council, describing a 'divided Kent' as their political experiment.

2️⃣ The i has visited Margate, where newbuild homes could be purchased and bought to house asylum seekers.

Council matters

Meetings this week:

• Dover: Cabinet gathers tonight (Monday) to discuss a new shared ownership policy, fees and charges for the year ahead, food waste collections, and more.
• Medway: Cabinet meets on Tuesday to discuss the provisional local government finance settlement, the creation of a new nature reserve in the Horsted Valley, Pride in Place funding, and lots more.
• Medway: Planning Committee decides on Wednesday on a 75 home development east of Hoo, 9 homes near High Halstow, a floodlit football foundation playzone in Chatham, and more.
• Canterbury: Scrutiny Committee holds an extraordinary meeting on Thursday after Green councillors called in the decision not to establish the 'Wealden condition' in planning, which would see new developments blocked if sufficient water systems weren't in place for them.

New planning applications:

• Maidstone: Outline planning application for 263 homes northeast of Headcorn.
• Maidstone: Application for 25 retirement bungalows in Sutton Vallance.
• Medway: Outline planning application for 350 homes south of Allhallows.

In brief

🚫 Kent County Council has refused to say how much money has been spent on external consultants since Reform took control over the council. KCC said that while they hold the data, compiling the answer would take more than 18 hours, so they had no legal obligation to respond.

🚐 Thousands of drivers have been scammed by fake Dart Charge websites after trying to pay a toll to use the Dartford Crossing.

👷 Erith Contractors have been appointed to build a new £18m tunnel for public transport and active travel between Ebbsfleet and Bluewater.

🚄 Ashford International has celebrated its 30th birthday, despite not having international services for the past six years.

🏥 A new 54 bed stroke unit is planned for the William Harvey Hospital in Ashford.

🏫 An abandoned school in Folkestone has been put up for sale for £1.85m.

🎄 Council organised Christmas lights in one part of Medway were so rubbish that Medway Council declined to charge for them.

🌧️ Storm Goretti caused flooding, fallen trees, and damage across the county last week.

🌊 Access to Deal Pier has been closed indefinitely after severe stormy weather damaged railings.

🗳️ Thanet District Council have approved the next steps in creating a Margate Town Council.

🏪 Maidstone Borough Council is offering grants from business rates to help businesses improve their shopfronts.

🚗 Cars will be banned on Earl Street in Maidstone to create outdoor dining areas for restaurants on the street to create a 'cafe culture' in the town.

🍗 Presumably not part of that cafe culture, American fried chicken chain Popeyes is due to open in Maidstone town centre.

📺 The Chair of the Ashford Conservatives is very upset about Stranger Things.

Events this week

🎸 Sun 18 Jan - Skep Wax Indie Day // Local record label delivers day of talk and performances for Folkestone Songwriting Festival. Speedway, Folkestone. Tickets £10.

Footnotes

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