Musical chairs at County Hall

Musical chairs at County Hall

Kent County Council’s latest Cabinet reshuffle has been presented, naturally enough, as a sign of renewal.

Leader Linden Kemkaran said the changes would bring in “new energy” while strengthening the “experienced team already delivering for Kent,” leaving Reform in the “strongest possible position” to build on its first year in office.

That is the official version. The less flattering one is that, not even a year into Reform’s administration at County Hall, the top team is already being moved around again in fairly conspicuous fashion. There are promotions. There is a clear demotion. There are sideways moves. There is an expanded brief for the councillor now responsible for steering Kent through local government reorganisation. And hanging over all of it is one rather obvious question the council’s own announcement did not really answer: What exactly happened to Paul King?

KCC announced the formal changes on Monday:

• Paul Webb moves from Communities and Regulatory Services to become Cabinet Member for Integrated Children’s Services, replacing Chris Palmer.
• Palmer, in turn, moves into a new role as Deputy Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care.
• Georgia Foster steps up from deputy in adult social care to become Cabinet Member for Communities and Regulatory Services, with Chris Burwash coming in as her deputy.
• Jamie Henderson also moves up, going from deputy to Cabinet Member for Environment, Coastal Regeneration and Public Health in what KCC describes as a newly updated and expanded role.
• Ben Fryer becomes Deputy Cabinet Member for Economic Development and Special Projects.
• Chris Hespe keeps his Cabinet role but sees his local government efficiency brief widened to include local government reorganisation, supported by Paul Chamberlain as deputy.

Taken one by one, none of that is necessarily remarkable. Councils reshuffle, leaders move people around, and deputies get promoted. Portfolios are regularly rewritten to align with political priorities. If KCC had simply brought in Foster and Henderson, tweaked a couple of job titles and carried on, this would probably have been filed away as routine internal management.

But this does not quite read like that.

For one thing, Palmer’s move from Cabinet Member for Children’s Services to deputy in adult social care is hard to describe as anything other than a demotion. KCC’s announcement does not use that word, obviously, but it is difficult to see it any other way. Webb’s move into children’s services is more of a sideways transfer, though even that suggests the leadership wanted a different person in charge of one of the council’s most sensitive briefs. Foster and Henderson are the clear winners, both stepping up into full Cabinet roles. Chamberlain, meanwhile, appears to have been moved sideways into a different deputy role.

The most consequential change, though, may not be one of the promotions at all. Chris Hespe’s brief has now been expanded from local government efficiency to include local government reorganisation, putting him at the centre of one of the biggest questions facing Kent politics. Reform can present that as a sign of confidence. It also looks a little like a quiet reframing of DOLGE itself.

When Reform arrived at County Hall, DOLGE was pitched as a flagship idea, with proof that waste was everywhere, savings were there for the taking, and the new administration would bring a harder-edged competence to sorting it all out. As a standalone political brand, it was meant to signal clarity and seriousness. Bundling it together with local government reorganisation risks making it look more like just another part of the machinery.

Hespe himself is not exactly a low-noise appointment. He is a very online councillor with a public profile that has often been more conspicuous than reassuring, prone to the kind of posting and reposting that turns a competence brief into a communications problem. Giving him even more responsibility suggests Kemkaran sees him as a trusted lieutenant. It also underlines the slightly odd position Reform has landed in. A project originally sold as a bold, standalone mission now looks somewhat watered down, and is being carried forward by one of the administration’s more obviously political and controversial figures.

Reform’s new DOLGE boss is extremely online

Reform’s flagship efficiency project at Kent County Council is back in the spotlight this week, following a cabinet appointment that raises fresh questions about credibility, competence and communication at County Hall. We look at why the replacement of the council’s efficiency lead matters, what it tells us about

Kent CurrentKent Current

If this reshuffle was meant to project stability ahead of reorganisation, it has chosen an odd way of showing it.

Then there is King.

KCC’s reshuffle press release never actually mentions him. That is striking in itself. Until recently, King had been the council as Cabinet Member for Environment, Coastal Regeneration and Special Projects. The current Cabinet line-up no longer includes him among Cabinet members or deputy Cabinet members at all. Instead, Henderson now holds the environment and coastal regeneration brief, while David Wimble is listed separately as Cabinet Member for Economic Development and Special Projects. In other words, King has disappeared from the Cabinet table entirely.

That may all have an entirely straightforward explanation. Perhaps he chose to step back. Perhaps this has been coming for some time. Perhaps there is some perfectly mundane internal logic to it all. But if so, neither KCC nor King has chosen to spell that out.

Asked by the Kent Current about his departure from Cabinet, King did not offer an explanation, instead replying that media requests should go through the press office, which did not respond to our questions. That is his prerogative. But it leaves a fairly obvious vacuum, and in politics, vacuums do not stay empty for long.

Opposition councillors have already begun filling it.

Liberal Democrat councillor Tim Prater wrote on social media that it “looks like KCC Cabinet Member Paul King got the bullet from Reform’s Kent Cabinet today,” adding that, as far as he could tell, King’s apparent competence “might be enough these days.” It is a pointed line, and a characteristically partisan one. Prater explicitly said he did not know what had happened, so it should be treated as political commentary rather than evidence. But it neatly captures the basic problem Reform now has. If you remove a Cabinet member without publicly explaining why, other people will cheerfully supply their own theories.

The Greens have been only slightly more diplomatic. In a press release issued after the reshuffle, Kent Green group leader Mark Hood said that with local government reorganisation looming, the council had hoped to see stability as inexperienced Cabinet members settled into their roles rather than what he called “more of the chaos we have come to expect.”

That is opposition rhetoric, of course, and Reform will have no difficulty dismissing it as exactly that. But the attack lines only land because the underlying picture is a little awkward.

Less than a year into office, Kemkaran’s administration is still moving key people around. One Cabinet member has plainly been pushed down the ladder. Another has vanished from the senior team without any public account of why. Others are being asked to get to grips with reshaped or expanded briefs just as Kent moves into the most consequential period it has faced in local government for decades.

None of that means the administration is falling apart. That would be too much. Councils do not collapse because a leader refreshes the Cabinet after a year. The more plausible reading is slightly subtler than that. Reform does not yet look like an administration fully at ease with itself. It still looks like one rearranging, correcting and recalibrating as it goes.

That may prove politically harmless if the new team quickly settles and starts projecting confidence. Reform can point to Foster and Henderson as a new generation moving up. It can say Hespe’s broadened brief shows it is taking reorganisation seriously. It can insist that the reshuffle is simply the normal business of building the right leadership team for the next phase.

A reshuffle is supposed to project command. This one, for now at least, raises almost as many questions as it answers.

Cliftonville race enters final week

It's the final week of the Cliftonville by-election campaign, where residents will elect a new county councillor to replace Daniel Taylor, who lost his seat once he was jailed for a year. With just one week left and the postal vote operation already well underway, here is the latest from the campaign:

• Cliftonville voters will get a chance to put questions directly to candidates next week at what appears to be the only hustings organised for the by-election. The event, arranged by Cliftonville resident Nico Macdonald, takes place at ARK Cliftonville on Tuesday, two days before polling day. Labour’s Joanne Bright and the Greens’ Rob Yates are confirmed to attend, while the other candidates have been invited. Conservative candidate Charlie Leys and Lib Dem candidate Dr Mo Shafaei are not available in person, with organisers saying both have been asked to submit short introductory videos. Residents can attend for free or submit questions in advance.
• Labour is shouting very loudly that the tactical voting website StopReformUK is suggesting voters choose Joanne Bright in the by-election. Unsurprisingly, other parties don't quite see it the same way.
• Thanet Green Party announced that its membership has increased fourfold since this time last year, from 250 to over 1,000. Whether that translates to election votes is another matter.
• Of course, those figures are dwarfed by the surge in fans of Reform candidate Marc Rattigan's Facebook page, which has gone from 23 last month to nearly 4,000 now. He'll be delighted to have the support of such prominent and definitely very real local figures like DesertCharmquick261, LittleCrewdigital350, and FrostyAgencylive847.

Kent finds room for one more culture bid

As we noted at the start of the week, Kent had already made a decent fist of turning the government’s new UK Town of Culture contest into a county-wide free-for-all. But by the time the 31 March deadline arrived, the field had swollen again. Kent now appears to have at least 11 towns publicly attached to bids, with Chatham, Folkestone, Deal, Dartford, Margate, Gravesend, Northfleet, Sevenoaks, Tenterden, Sheerness and Sittingbourne all in the mix.

That feels like a very Kent way of doing things. The county has instead treated the invitation to bid like an invite sent to every child in the class. Some towns have gone in alone. Others have decided even that was unnecessarily restrained.

The late addition this time is a twin-town bid from Sheerness and Sittingbourne, trailed by Kevin McKenna MP in a KentOnline comment piece and then, with admirable subtlety, on social media.

McKenna’s pitch is that the bid is a grassroots effort shaped by residents, community groups, artists, local organisations and Swale Borough Council, built around a unique link of island and mainland, industry and heritage, and turning local cultural life into something bigger. The list of selling points is suitably ambitious, taking in three theatres, three brass bands, community museums, major local events, a proposed Thames sailing barge regatta and the possible return of the Queenborough Medieval Fair.

The island-mainland framing is a good line, even if it may come as mild news to Chatham, where St Mary’s Island has been sitting there connected by a bridge this whole time. Still, it adds a pleasing extra twist to Kent’s overall showing. The county now has not one but two paired entries in the mix, with Gravesend and Northfleet already being put forward together by Gravesham before Sheerness and Sittingbourne joined them on deadline day. Kent, apparently, looked at a competition called Town of Culture and decided singular nouns were more of a guideline than a rule.

That is what makes the whole thing so enjoyable. Taken individually, many of the bids sound perfectly serious. Sevenoaks is pitching practical cultural improvements alongside the badge value. Margate was drafted in by Thanet after the wider Isle of Thanet missed out on the UK City of Culture 2029 longlist. Dartford has gone in armed with the Orchard Theatre, the Sir Peter Blake Gallery and the useful fact that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are part of the local story. Folkestone, unsurprisingly, has a broad cultural case ready to go.

Taken together, though, the effect is different. The joke is no longer that one or two Kent towns fancy their chances. It is that when the government invited places to explain why they mattered, an unusually large chunk of Kent responded, more or less at once, with a confident case for itself. By the close of entries, the county had not merely joined the contest. It had rather aggressively populated it.

There may yet be a serious winner somewhere in that pack. There may even be several serious contenders. But before ministers have even announced a shortlist, Kent has already made its mark on the inaugural Town of Culture race by answering the question of who should enter with the broadest answer available. As many places as possible.

Footnotes

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