Where is the real heart of Kent?
As County Hall loses much of its power, where will Kent’s real centre be?
Local government reorganisation will end Kent County Council and loosen Maidstone's long-held claim as the county's administrative capital. That raises a surprisingly difficult question: if Kent no longer has an obvious centre of power, where is the real heart of the county? Today we're stepping back from the daily news to explore a question that's been on my mind for months.
Where is the real heart of Kent?
Kent is about to lose its capital. The awkward thing is that nobody can agree where it is anyway.
For decades, Maidstone has made the best available case. County Hall sits there, the county council sits inside it, and a substantial share of the decisions affecting roads, schools, libraries, social care and everyone’s capacity for patience have flowed from it.
Local government reorganisation changes that. County Hall will still be there, and Maidstone will still call itself the county town, but the institution that made it Kent’s default centre of power will not survive in the same form.
So this is not really a story about the geographical centre of Kent, though that question has already been answered. It is about the more useful, and considerably less settled, question: where does Kent actually gather?
A county can have more than one kind of centre. There is the place where power sits, the place outsiders recognise, the place people meet, and the place around which the rest of it seems to turn. Sometimes they are the same place. Kent has been less fortunate.
Maidstone has the old paperwork. Canterbury has the cathedral. Rochester has the castle, Dickens and a very good claim to be more alive than most supposed county centres. Ashford has spent years being told it is the future. Bluewater has the car parks. Detling has one weekend each summer when half the county seems to arrive to look at tractors.
None is entirely convincing.
Kent is about to lose its capital. But where is its real heart? Register for free to see which places make the strongest claim.
