It was rather a low key debut for the new 17-strong opposition UKIP group at County Hall this week, as councillors gathered for the first official meeting since the dramatic election.

You could hardly say there was a lot of raw politics about. Given this was largely a ceremonial meeting to appoint a new chairman and deal with some rather boring constitutional details, perhaps we should not have been surprised.

The ruling Conservatives remain a bit jittery about UKIP, that's clear -  but they had a relatively easy ride on this outing and were rather relieved not to have been put on the spot about anything that contentious.

Let's not forget that this was the first taste of County Hall politics that the 17 UKIP councillors had and there were probably a few "first-day-at-school" type nerves around. KCC can be a pretty intimidating place - as a couple of the newcomers confided. "The scale of this place is huge," said one.

Perhaps the nerves were responsible for a bit of a tangle that UKIP got into over the new allowances scheme - in other words, their pay.

The group's leader Roger Latchford said his group supported a freeze but went on to say that it was unfair that all opposition group leaders were getting the same special responsibility allowance.

The point seemed to be that UKIP was taking on the "formal" opposition role at KCC and therefore its shadow cabinet members ought to be entitled to more money. (Under the scheme, all oppostion groups leaders will get £6,316 plus an additional £500 for each member.) 

Whatever way you look at it, it came across as a request for more money from the taxpayers' pocket and a few Conservatives lost no time in making the point.

For a party that makes much of the need to curb public sector profligacy, it was not an altogether auspicious start. Let's put it down to finding their political feet.

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HOW did Thanet Council come to a position where it has found itself out of pocket to the tune of £3.3m after a secret deal with a ferry company went pear shaped?

And perhaps as importantly, why were details of the deal kept secret from councillors?

And was there a serious misjudgement by officers and members in allowing the debts to stack up and a failure to recognise warning signs?

These are just some of the questions facing the council after it emerged that it was having to raid its reserves to plug the £3.3m hole in its finances caused by the company, Transeuropa Ferries, going into administration.

It is staggering that the council has found itself in such a situation. It believed the deal, which allowed Transeurope to defer payments on harbour fees to the council, was justified to retain the company's presence in the town.

One of many problems it now faces is why the deal was kept secret and never shared with all members of the council, who should have had the opportunity to scrutinise it properly - even if it meant they had to do it behind closed doors as an exempt item.

It is not even clear whether the original deal that was agreed by the council's then Conservative administration was the subject of a cabinet decision or report. Ought not such a deal have been signed off by the executive under the proper executive decision-making process?

If it was a key cabinet decision - and it is hard to think why it would not have been - it should have been properly recorded and reported by the cabinet or cabinet member and then presented to the relevant scrutiny committee who would have had the power to call it in.

As far as we can tell, it wasn't - the council has not yet responded to a series of questions we have asked on this.

And not only that but why wasn't the deal flagged up in the council's last annual statement of accounts, where you might have expected it to feature?

Someone at the council will have to account for all of this but on the surface, it looks like a monumental mess that has left taxpayers likely to foot the bill.

Unlike many, politicians have to re-apply for their jobs every four or five years and the decision about whether they should be re-appointed is in the hands of voters.

And voters can be rather unpredictable and prone to switch allegiances, as the recent county council election showed rather dramatically.

So, we should not be surprised that a number of Conservative backbenchers in the county voted last night for the 'rebel' amendment on the Queen's Speech.

There is nothing like a bruising mid-term electoral lashing to concentrate the mind and the Kent MPs who backed the amendment no doubt had given careful consideration to the dramatic UKIP surge in the county council election.

So, this was a convenient way of sending a message to the electorate that they are as sceptical about Europe as any UKIP candidate who might be on the ballot paper in 2015.

Their decision to blow a raspberry at Mr Cameron will prove particularly helpful in election literature to post through doors in a couple of years.

Conservative backbenchers in Kent know that the issue of Europe is not going to go away. Those who knocked on doorsteps during the recent election campaign found that Britain's membership of the EU and immigration were often not far from voters' thoughts.

While UKIP is unlikely to win Parliamentary seats at the next election, that is not the point. It is whether UKIP will cost them votes in sufficient numbers to lose them their seats.

Marginal seats like those in the Medway Towns, north Kent and Thanet have switched between Labour and the Conservatives over recent years and if there is one thing that current MPs fear it is that a split in the vote for the right will allow Labour back in.

Whether UKIP's surge will be durable is, of course, open to question.

But if the results of the recent election showed anything, it is that voters are deeply cynical about commitments made for some time in the future - and particularly cynical about promises to do things after the election.

MPs who backed the rebel EU amendment understood this. It might be considered gesture politics but it is inconceivable that they did not make a calculated decision that it was worth putting a marker down now - even if the election is two years away.

 

UKIP did not win control of any councils and three quarters of people who turned out did not actually vote for them. But it is a measure of the impact it had on the political landscape on Thursday that it has succeeded  in becoming the talking point in the debate about whether the the political map of Britain has been radically redrawn.

No mean achievement for a party dismissed as clowns, loonies and fruitcakes by their opponents.

The Kent County Council election  results and reaction>>>>

Nowhere was their success more shocking or stunning than Kent where against even the most optimistic predictions they came tantalisingly close to depriving the Conservatives of securing control of County Hall for the first time in two decades. From a standing start, they took seat after seat from the Conservatives, who were paralysed with anxiety that their grip on KCC was being loosened. To end up with more seats than Labour and the Liberal Democrats and become the formal opposition was truly staggering.

There are lots of reasons why UKIP did well and it may be that in Kent, sensitivities around issues like immigration and asylum seekers were more pronounced and resonated more with voters than elsewhere. It is telling that the areas where they did particularly well - Thanet and Shepway - are both places which have had deep rooted problems with economic deprivation and have also been areas where the impact of new communities have been seen and felt at first hand.

In fact, while the party did target Thanet, it did not have a concerted campaign in Shepway yet nearly pulled off a clean sweep of all five seats with very little canvassing. Gains in Swale - another area where the recession has hit - were also notable.The exception is the affluent west Kent town of Tunbridge Wells, where it also won seats.

More than that, UKIP has tapped into widespread voter antipathy and disenchantment with mainstream politics and mainstream political parties: its success has a lot to do with people regarding it as anti-establishment; anti-elite and somehow outside the system - a perfect repository for protest votes. But it has also tapped into a major issue that the big parties have spent too long pussy-foting around - Britain's role and future in the EU. The unwilllingnes of the main parties to be explicit (particularly in terms of time scale) about when people might be given a say has been devastating for them.

But after the euphoria of Thursday's results, there comes the cold reality of the consequences of suddenly finding yourself elected to office.

UKIP county councillors will troop into County Hall next week for an induction programme that will remind them that as locally-elected representatives, they will not be able - much as they like -  to spend the next four years banging on about an EU referendum and immigration. They will all be receiving allowances of around £13,000 to represent constituents whose interests may well be rather more parochial but no less important  - the state of their roads, school places, families dealing with difficult social services issues and planning.

The ability of UKIP to build on the momentum that it has will not be based on how loudly local councillors shout about the need for a referendum on Europe. If they want to be more than a flash in the pan and establish a secure position as a genuine political alternative, voters will need to be convinced they can tackle and influence policy in ways that affect - for the better - the 300 different services that Kent County Council provides. It will also be interesting to see how and if the 17-strong group, all newcomers with one or two exceptions, to the world of local government, remain a cohesive unit.

Parties that achieve success quickly and unexpectedly can sometimes find it awkward adjusting to the demands of being elected to public office and it was intriguing hearing in private how some Conservatives at KCC are already speculating over the prospects of "turning" some of the new UKIP councillors and returning them to the Tory fold.

The other challenge, allied to this, is that UKIP's USP - a movement outside the political system - has actually been undermined by their stunning success. They are, in a sense, no longer outsiders looking in at mainstream politics. If they believe the hype and really do consider they are part of a four-party system, then the consequence is that people will at a council level particularly be judging them on what they actually do rather than on what they say.

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For the Conservatives in Kent, the election was a sobering moment. Only once in its history have the Conservatives lost control of County Hall, back in 1993. That they came within a whisker of losing outright control last Thursday was a discomfiting experience, to put it mildy. In one sense, they were not being punished because of their track record over the last four years but were being punished for the perceived failings of the coalition, which is what they had expected.

But I do think that the party has to do more than blame the dismal results on mid-term blues. Senior Conservatives in Kent have been quick to turn their fire on the national leadership, with KCC leader Paul Carter being particularly damning - accusing some in his party at Westminster of acting more like Lib Dems than Conservatives.

Implicit in this is the idea that the party's woes can be dealt with by a lurch to the right. I am not so sure. The received wisdom so far as general elections are concerned is that they are won and lost in the middle ground. Tony Blair won three because he realised that in places like Kent, classic middle England territory, you had to appeal to the centre ground to deliver victory. 

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Labour has insisted that it is satisfied with the progress it has made in Kent but it fell short of its key objective: recapturing all the seats it had lost back in 2009.

For it to have shown it was making real advances, it should have won more and the fact that it has secured too few to even be the official opposition at County Hall is not where it wants or needs to be. Ed Miliband staked a lot by coming to traditional Tory heartland during the campaign but on these results, it seems the party still has a Southern Discomfort issue.

Their one hope may be that over the next four years, there will inevitably be  a handful of by-elections. The Tories need only lose a few seats for the arithmetic to be changed in a way that just might lead to the authority having a different rainbow coalition.

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We expect the jungle drums at County Hall to be beating with news of a Conservative cabinet reshuffle within a few days. The defeat of the well-regarded cabinet member for schools Mike Whiting means there will have to be changes. Education remains one of the key roles and there are many awkward issues looming, not least trying to persuade Michael Gove to back the KCC plans for a new grammar school.

The other gossip surrounds the future of the deputy leader Alex King, who was unable to be at his count after breaking his leg. It could be that his tenure as the reliable second-in-command could be coming to an end. If it is, perhaps the role could go to the Sevenoaks councillor Roger Gough - well-thought of, intelligent and potentially a good foil to the rather direct style of the current leader.

But I also think he'd make a good education cabinet member. And whenever I make these predictions, they usually turn out to be well wide of the mark so you might be advised to disregard them...

 

 

 

 

When county education chiefs set out their blueprint for Kent's schools for the next five years, the introduction to the extremely lengthy Commissioning Plan acknowledged the education authority was operating in "an increasingly diverse environment."

Some of the consequences of that environment are beginning to be seen, not least in the challenge facing Kent County Council to ensure there are not just enough school places across Kent for children but that there are, in its own words, enough "appropriate places". At the same time as fulfilling that statutory obligation, it retains a general responsibility for the performance of schools in the area - regardless of whether schools have broken free of the supposed shackles of the county council and become academies.

Squaring this circle has its problems and data from the authority shows wide-variations in the intake of Year 7 pupils across the 99 secondary schools. The data was obtained by the well-known Kent education adviser Peter Read.

That there are five - including Kent's first academy, The Marlowe in Ramsage - that took in less than half the 11-year-olds they actually had places for is not quite as shocking as it might appear. Worrying, true, but Kent is no different to any other area in seeing fluctuations in pupil numbers across both the primary and secondary sector.

Education chiefs say that a general surplus - or spare capacity - is not necessarily a bad thing, although if it applied the same calculations to the empty desk data now as it did when it embarked on a programme of closing and merging more than 40 primary schools a few years ago, we might be seeing the same happening in the secondary sector.

The arguably more interesting aspect of the figures is not the under-occuppied schools but the third where more pupils were accepted in Year 7 last year than schools had places for. They include nine academies and 13 grammars and it hardly needs saying they are all among the best performing schools in the county.

There is nothing KCC can do to stop popular over-subscribed academies enlarging as the government, which likes to apply a market forces philosophy to education, has decreed that is what should be permitted: it's a question of supply and demand. This approach marks a return to the Thatcherite ethos in which competition between schools was considered the best way to drive up standards. No politician will ever say it but underlying this approach is a view that if schools can't make the grade, they should wither on the vine.

For KCC, this means trying to provide places while some schools, understandably focused more on their own interests, look to increase their numbers to respond to parental wishes. But the only real area where KCC has direct control is over its maintained schools. It has very little power over academies which is precisely the point (whether you agree with it or not) of the policy. If successful schools expand, continue to be succcessful and siphon away more able children, where does that leave the others? And where does it leave KCC as the commissioning body?

That 13 grammars took in more children, coupled with plans by at least three more to add places next year, should also be a concern. There may be an issue of a shortage of places in west Kent but there are some who suspect something else is going on here.

The relentless quest and obsession among politicians for diversity in the schooling system has over the years, created as many problems as it solves. If the government does genuinely believe that academies and free schools are the answer to declining standards, perhaps the solution is for all schools to become them.

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When Katherine Kerswell was managing director of Kent County Council, she embarked on one of those "re-structuring" exercises with the Orwellian title of "The Change To Keep Succeeding" programme. This was dressed up in all kinds of impenetrable jargon but was basically about cutting away staff and particularly management.

It was not, to put it mildy, terribly popular especially with county councillors, who at one point questioned just how successful the programme could be considered when in an early incarnation, it appeared KCC was to end up with just as many top officers as it had under the old management structure.

Of course, the managing director secured more notoriety when she left KCC after less than two years in the job and picked up a £420,000 pay-off in the process, not exactly what council taxpayers considered value for money. Now she has written an article extolling public sector leaders to do more to be cost-effective in "these austere times".

It's hardly the most revelatory suggestion ever to have been uttered and the irony of it coming from someone who was extraordinarily well remunerated when she quit has not been lost on some.

However, I do agree with one thing she writes - namely that "decision-making that is obscure, unseen or hidden fails the test of a modern democracy. As citizens, we now want 24/7 accountability, and we expect the full disclosure and transparency of those public decisions taken in our name."

Why then, did we have to wait for KCC to fulfill its statutory requirement to publish its annual accounts to find out about her payout - six months after she left?

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Where is Kent's Big Society? It's hard to tell on the strength of the pitiful take-up of Kent County Council's £3m fund available to social entrepeneurs to set up business in the county. Just three loans have been taken up in a year, suggesting there's not much appetite out there for this kind of initiative.

Of course, KCC's loan rate of between 12 and 15% may have something to do with the low take-up.

 

 

 

 

When is a council service not a frontline service but something else?

In the world of local government, the distinction is important because council chiefs never like to take decisions that adversely affect so-called frontline services, especially when it comes to funding.

(And it begs another: if the primary function of councils is to provide such services, why is it spending - and why has it spent - so much money on other apparently inessential stuff?)

One of the ways such a service is defined is to talk about it as separate from, or different to, council "back office" functions or "administrative services" - the services that do all the paperwork while those at the "front line" get on with the more important work.

Whether such a definition is valid is open to question.

Kent County Council has made great play of the fact that its latest budget proposals, incorporating £94m of savings, will not hit these services. On one level, the council's claim is reasonable.

But the problem is that it is actually quite difficult to tell exactly what impact these savings will have just at precisely this moment; even the most innocuous looking saving can end up having repercussions that not even the council's financial gurus had thought of.

And if you cut administrative jobs out of the equation, where does the burden then fall? Kent County Council's answer - and that of others - is to say that it is carrying out a programme of transformational activity in which services will be delivered differently and service users won't notice.

About one third of KCC's planned savings - £28m -  are to come from just such activity although it's hard to get beyond the headline figure to the detail of exactly how in the welter of budget information KCC issues about its spending plans.

The Conservative administration has also underlined how savings will be secured through a greater emphasis on preventative work, especially in adult and children's social care.

That seems perfectly sensible but it is not hard to find evidence of the scale of the challenge: an original intention to save £4m in the budget for looked after children has not proved achievable because of the continuing high demand for services.

And some believe that the austerity drive, welfare cuts and the on-going recession will only create more call on some services, particularly around care, not less.

Even KCC itself admits in its budget book, the government's relentless belt-tightening is really putting the squeeze on it: "The cumulative effect is that local government is working within an increasingly uncertain and challenging public service landscape."

"If the economy continues to show a slow recovery, the indicative position for 2014/115 and 2015/16 could get worse and we could face additional spending demands and/or further reduced income necessitating greater savings."

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Despite giving the public some eight weeks to comment on its original budget savings of £60m, KCC is not embarking on a repeat exercise even though the savings have increased by more than half.

It says that as none of the new savings require an "equality impact assessment" there is no need for a full consultation. There is said to be some nervousness at County Hall that this may be challengeable but they have their collective fingers crossed.

Instead, views are being invited on the new budget up until the end of the month, a matter of a week and a bit.

But where you can feed in your views is hard to find. In fact, there doesn't appear to be anywhere on its website where you can unless I have missed something.

Answers anyone?

Whatever else the Conservative-run Kent County Council does this year, one thing is clear: it will be moving heaven and earth to ensure that its plan to open a grammar school annexe in west Kent come to fruition.

Of course, on one level, the argument is simply about the authority responding to a genuine grievance held by many parents about the lack of provision of selective places in Sevenoaks.

Kent sets its sights on new grammar annexe>>>

But the politics - and politicking - involved goes to the heart of a debate about grammar schools that has simmered and occasionally come to the boil within the Conservative party ever since David Cameron, in something of an educational Clause Four moment, decided that his party would not support any further selection and the idea of more grammars.

Kent Tories have never made much effort to conceal their unhappiness with this U-turn, believing fervently that many parents actually want more selection, rather than less.

For many, selective schooling is something of an article of faith and have been aghast at the party turning its back on the policy.

So, the possibility of adding more grammar school places, through new arrangements allowing the expansion of popular schools and where there is a proven shortage of available places, has been seized on with something approaching Messianic zeal in Kent.

Which goes a little way to account for the fanfare surrounding the announcement that Kent County Council has identified a potential site for its new annexe. 

A press release unveiling the news was about as overtly political as you could get without breaching the protocols on local government publicity that are designed to prevent councils from issuing anything that might be construed as seeking to solicit support for a particular party.

Education cabinet member Cllr Mike Whiting was even quoted as saying that parents not just in Kent "but across the country" were relying on "Conservative administrations across the country to champion and provide" more selective schooling. How that got cleared for release is anybody's guess.

The release was crammed with supportive statements from various Sevenoaks county councillors (all Conservative) and the Conservative MP Michael Fallon. The only surprise was that they obviously could not prevail on Michael Gove to provide a suitable soundbite - but I daresay that will come in due course.

I understand there has been some tensions behind the scenes about how this was all handled. The ruling Conservative administration at County Hall won't be especially bothered, even if it is lacking a rather vital piece of the jigsaw - namely which existing grammar schools are going to partner or sponsor the annexe.

What matters from the political, rather than the educational perspective, is that Kent Conservatives can go into this May's council election campaign being able to underline - unlike the national party - that they stand firmly behind selection and grammars and are actually doing something about it.

Not just so they can bolster support from within their own ranks but so they can back the other parties into a corner - not least UKIP, who I am told, are fielding candidates in every single division and have been scornful of the Conservative's decision to abandon support for selection.

 

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The omission of any details about would-be sponsors for the grammar annexe is intriguing. The line from KCC is that it is making sure everything is watertight before going public on who might be involved.

There will have to be two partner schools but quite who they may be is anyone's guess. There have been rumours that the council has found it hard to get anyone interested.

One interesting aspect of the announcement was the apparent support of the Knole Academy, which is currently using part of the Wildernesse School site, for the masterplan.

Could it become one of the sponsors in some way or have some other involvement, perhaps in helping provide additional support for those who do end up attending the grammar annexe?

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With most council decisions, there is some kind of process - consistent with the authority's constitution - by which the decision is considered, sometimes consulted on and agreed.

It is a process that generally speaking happens in the public domain, with supporting reports and other documents that anyone can access.

And on occasion, decisions might get called in by backbenchers so they can chew it over and ask questions. Indeed, KCC is so keen on ensuring that councillors do this before decisions happen that it has set up an entirely new system of cabinet "pre-scrutiny" committees.

However, the decision-making process involved in identifying a site for its new grammar school has gone through no such process. The "decision" was announced via, as I've pointed out, a triumphantly worded press release.

It's precisely the sort of thing that makes people like me rather cynical and suspicious that KCC can often be more interested in the political PR value of its activities above anything else.

Next week, we will get the judgement from Ofsted about how well Kent's most vulnerable children are looked after, following the damning assessment two years ago. It will be interesting to see how this may be spun.

Politicians profess to care about many causes - and many are genuine about it - but the causes they espouse most vigourously are often the ones that connect most directly with voters and ones that can yield quick returns.

Which goes some way to explain why successive governments have opted to kick into the long grass the tricky issue of how society will deal with - and pay for - the increasing number of elderly people needing care in the coming years.

There are signs that the head-in-the-sand approach adopted by ministers may very slowly be changing. The issue is getting traction after years in which the Treasury particularly has had its collective head in the sand deeper than most.

The Dilnot Report, which set out reforms that it said would relieve many of the anxieties caused by the uncertainty of knowing how they will pay for care when they need it, has been gathering dust amid warm words from all parties about how they endorse the principles but are still considering how best to set a cap that would limit how much we pay.

Former care minister Paul Burstow stepped into the fray this week with a suggestion to means test winter fuel allowances to release the £1.7bn needed a year to fund a cap of £35,000 on the amount people would have to pay for their care. He was roundly criticised but whatver you think about his case, he has at least outlined one way forward - which is more than anyone else has done.

In Kent, the Conservative leader of Kent County Council Paul Carter has initiated a petition to Downing Street calling on the government to implement the Dilnot reforms by 2015 (before the election), arguing the £1.7bn bill is "a price worth paying" for the horrendous costs many will face when they are older.

 

Opposition parties may quibble about the fact that KCC is pushing this at a time when it is making £18m in savings from its own adult care budget but if the petition helps to generate debate and focus on the ticking time bomb, it deserves to be supported.

Many Conservatives are privately bewildered by the government's unwillingness to tackle the issue at the same time as ring-fencing money for things like International aid and apprehensive about how they will be explain to voters what the policy is when they are out canvassing support for the elections in May.

The issue is particularly pertinent for Kent, which has a higher elderly population than many parts of the country. By 2026, there will be about 658,000 people in the county over 50; compared to about 537,000 now. The demographic trend is only going in one direction.

 

And even politicians get old.

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To say the voters of Kent were underwhelmed by the first election for a police commissioner would be something of an under-statement. A turnout of 16.5% was hardly a sign of voter engagement.

In an effort to get people interested, the Home Office did, during the campaign, produce leaflets for each area detailing candidates' election statements. You had to formally request these in writing as the government dtermined it would be too expensive to allow every candidate a free mail shot.

So, of the 1.2m voters in Kent, how many requested a copy of the one for Kent, which contained 16 glossy pages? In response to a Freedom of Information request, the Home Office has revealed that a grand total of 4,712 leaflets were ordered by residents thirsting for information about who was after the £85k a year job.

Across the country as a whole, 120,361 leaflets were ordered.

And the cost to the taxpayer of printing and distributing these broachures? A total of £191,862.96

 

 

 

"I want to stop the police being run by politicians” –  Ann Barnes, declaring her plan to stand in the election to be Kent’s first crime commissioner

 

“A wilful waste of money” – Ann Barnes, as chairman of Kent Police Authority on the plans for elected police commissioners, before declaring her candidacy

 

 

"It's my view that the idiot entering the roundabout at speed with one
hand on the steering wheel and the other holding his mobile phone poses
an infinitely greater threat to the public wellbeing than a couple of teenagers sharing a cannabis spliff." 

 

Would-be independent police commissioner candidate Ian Driver.

 

 

 

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“Unacceptable and disturbing” – minister Grant Shapps on the £420,000 pay-out to former Kent county council MD Katherine Kerswell

 

“It will save a fortune in the long run” – KCC leader Cllr Paul Carter on scrapping Katherine Kerswell’s role

 

“I am thrilled to join the civil service” Katherine Kerswell on her new six-figure salaried job in the civil service. A few months after leaving her job at KCC

 

“You have to question the training and development within KCC. It does not produce a good working environment when you see people coming in on a six-month contract and apparently sort things out” – Conservative county councillor Mike Jarvis

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“Why don’t they live within their means, or move down here and see what it’s like to be taxed until they weep? Frankly, we can no longer keep subsiding other people’s spending habits.” Former Sun editor Kelvin Mackenzie makes friends in the North by advocating a new “Southern” party for the region

 

“I did receive an invitation but told him I wasn’t going to go.” Rochester and Strood MP Mark Reckless on reports that he was courted by UKIP funder Stuart Wheeler to switch sides

 

“Helen’s exceptionally demanding job requires her to be in London for most of the week, which is where she lives during that time. Her decision to use her rental allowance in London is therefore understandable and acceptable given her circumstances.” A declaration of loyalty for under-fire Maidstone MP Helen Grant from her party chairman James Peace

 

“She is treating the voters of Maidstone with utter contempt. She is exploiting the system to the maximum and she seems to consider her constituency a complete irrelevance. She should do the right thing and resign” – Becky Matthews, a constituent of Mrs Grant’s

 

 

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“Everybody is gobsmacked that they got themselves into a financial mess and did not realise what the situation was. It is staggering.” Dover and Deal MP Charlie Elphicke on the financially-stricken K College

 

“You cannot just click your fingers and fix it. We need to think big and hold our nerve over the decades.” Transport minister Patrick McCloughlin on criticism of the government’s review of aviation strategy. It won’t report until after the election.

 

 

 

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“Following a cabinet decision, it has been decided not to proceed with the trade mission to the USA as it was not considered the best use of public funds at this time.” – Kent County Council scraps a planned trade mission across the pond

 

“It is a small investment and a real opportunity” – Kent County Council defends the same trade mission to the USA a few weeks earlier.

 

“The structure of Kent commercial services is unnecessarily complex and not fit for purpose, it lacks the appropriate direction and has become untethered from the council.” A leaked confidential report on KCC’s commercial services

 

“Utter madness, irresponsible and ridiculous”. The leader of Kent County Council Cllr Paul Carter on Shepway Council’s plan for a nuclear waste site

 

“Let’s not over-dramatise this.” Paul Carter on the same subject.

 

“Many are in dire need of some TLC”  - Backbench county councillor Mike Harrison raises an important matter of state at a full council meeting. Yes, the apparently poor  condition of the chairs councillors sit on.

 

“It makes us look like the landed gentry” – county councillor Bryan Sweetland (Con) berates the media over its coverage of the expenses of the county council’s chauffeur-driven cars.

 

“Chauffeur-driven” – how KCC’s policy document refers to the authority’s fleet of cars. Five times.

 

“Concurrent strategies and tactics that will facilitate this requirement must be integrated into the broader approach.” A gold-medal winning piece of jargon from Kent County Council’s emergency Olympic plan.

 

  

 

"A momentous moment in the county's history" - KCC education cabinet member Cllr Mike Whiting on the proposals for a new grammar school.

 

  

 

“A number of people have said the Kent test is not fit for purpose and could be improved, specifically because there is a sense you can coach for it and if people are willing to devote money to something, they can get an unfair advantage when it comes to getting a grammar school place." Cllr Mike Whiting announces a review of the 11-plus to make it "tutor proof"

 

 

 

 

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“We cannot go around all the institutions of this country, heralding the virtues of direct elections when at the heart of our constitution 825 members are there as a result of some form of patronage.” Thanet South MP Laura Sandys backs reform of the House of Lords

 

 

"The awarding of this prize to the EU brings it into disrepute." UKIP leader Nigel Farage slams the decision to award the EU the Nobel Peace Prize.

 

 

Meanwhile, bears continue to make mess in woods...

 

 

 

 

 

 

For all its efforts to spin the announcement over its latest consultation on aviation policy, nothing can hide the fact that the government has opted to kick the most controversial decision about how to address the capacity question into the long grass.

Justine Greening may have presented the two-stage process as one which will allow a more considered deliberation but no amount of window dressing about the importance of deciding what "future sustainable aviation growth" should be can disguise that this is a short-term political fix.

We all know the reasons why: each and every option that has been floated, from Boris Island to a third runway at Heathrow, has potentially damaging ramifications for the Conservatives with MPs in sensitive seats - not least in Kent - making no secret that they won't be rolled over if the option of a new hub airport gets government backing.

So, the separate 'call for evidence' due to happen later this Autumn - no doubt after the party conference season - is a fudge of the worst kind. It is illogical, too when you read the full document the DfT has released about the key questions it wants to address.

We are told the exercise is designed to assess the best way of balancing the need for more frequent flights to emerging markets with the need to reduce the impact of airports on local communities.

Precisely the key question that will need to be considered if the Thames Estuary hub airport was part of the equation.

Turn to the section "Air quality and other local environmental impacts" and the lack of logic is even more explicit, with the government telling us: "Loss of habitats, species, landscape and built heritage, and significant impacts on water resources and ecosystems would only be advocated where there are no feasible alternatives and the benefits of proposals clearly outweigh those impacts."

How anyone can respond to Part One of this consultation exercise without any reference to the Thames Estuary scheme of Boris Island - and to be fair, a third runway at Heathrow - is beyond me - if consultees make arguments around this issue, will the DfT disqualify their contributions?

Inevitably, there has been plenty of political mudslinging about delay and dither.

The government may have bought a bit of time but at what cost? Most people seem to think that rather than looking at the national interests, rather narrower parochial interests have prevailed.

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What do county councillors think of plans for what will be the single most significant development in Kent for decades? Ashford council has given the go ahead for a development of 5,750 houses at Chilmington Green which will create effectively a new town.

KCC understandably is a key player and consultee in the debate because it will fall to the authority to provide new schools, roads and other community services as and when it is built. And there has - hardly surprisingly - been quite a debate stirred up about the scheme.

But the views of county councillors - particularly the ones that represent the area - have been silenced.

KCC has decided what its response to the development and a report setting out its views, signed off by the cabinet member responsible - Cllr Bryan Sweetland - was recently presented to one of KCC's new "pre-cabinet" committees - set up specifically with the intention of allowing backbenchers input into the decision-making process before decisions are taken.

So, was there a discussion about whether KCC had got it right? Were backbenchers asked to give their views on the process? Er, no.

The report was an 'urgent' report that effectively relayed that the decision had already been made because KCC had to respond to the Ashford council's consultation timetable.

The committee was told in no uncertain terms by the Conservative chairman David Brazier that he would not countenance any debate because the constitutional process had been followed.

A decision had been made and that was that. When the mild-mannered councillor Elizabeth Tweed did venture an opinion, she got a mild ticking off from Mr Brazier.

A fine example of democracy in action.

Two education stories involving Kent may, at first glance, appear unrelated.

The first involves parents in Sevenoaks petitioning Kent County Council for more grammar school places; the second involves Ofsted failing Kent's first secondary school academy and placing it in special measures. Seven years after it first opened its doors, the Marlowe Academy in Ramsage has been deemed to be offering students an unacceptable education.

Marlowe Academy failed by Ofsted>>>

Nothing could better illustrate just how stark the differences are in Kent when it comes to schooling. In one of the most prosperous and least disadvantaged areas of the county, parents are making the case for more selective places while in another - the county's economic blackspot where nearly 15% of 18-24-year-olds are out of work, the life chances and prospects for hundreds of children are being undermined because a school that cost £30m is, according to inspectors, failing.

The failures of the Marlowe cannot, of course, be laid at the door of those in Sevenoaks - which has the lowest unemployment rate in Kent and fewer 18-to-24-year-olds out of work than anywhere in the county -  where parents say they are simply arguing for increased capacity in the area to avoid children having to travel out of the area.

But the impact of selection on some schools in many areas cannot - and should not - be underestimated when it comes to making judgements about their achievements. Imagine being in a 100-metre sprint against Usain Bolt and just as you line up ,the marshal instructs you to move 25m behind the start line.

That is how many non-selective schools feel about the impact that grammars, which top slice the 25% of the most academically able children,  have. To their credit, many choose not to offer that as an excuse and are justifiably proud of what, in many cases, are outcomes that are - given their starting point - arguably better than some schools which select.

Roger De Haan, the chairman of governors at the Marlowe, says selection hasn't helped the challenge of improving the prospects of its pupils but you won't ever find Ofsted acknowledging - or even taking into account -  the potential impact that a selective system has on a non-selective school's performance.

It is often said by those in charge at County Hall that the "diversity" of Kent's schooling system is one of its strengths, and that such diversity affords parents the kind of choice not available elsewhere. Except, of course, that presumes a system in which all schools are doing equally as well - which is patently not the case.

To its credit, KCC has sought to bridge the gap between selective and non-selective schools in some ares through federations and partnerships and has set up the Kent Challenge to address the shortcomings of under-performing schools.

But the fact remains that there is a wide - some suggest widening gap - between the outcomes of pupils that is not being adequately addressed. Indeed, KCC's own director of education Patrick Leeson has been candid enough to say that there is less social mobility achieved in Kent through its schools than elsewhere and that the gap between the achievements of less well-off pupils and the more affluent is "extremely unacceptable."    

The damning Ofsted inspection of the Marlowe Academy is a striking reminder for both KCC and the government - which is ultimately accountable for academies - of just how far things still have to go before there is a genuine level playing field in Kent when it comes to schools and the outcomes and prospects for all children.

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IT is now more than two years since an audit inquiry into Kent County Council’s extensive commercial trading operations cleared the authority of competing unfairly with private business.
The probe followed well-publicised complaints from the private sector about KCC having an unfair competitive advantage over others and allegations of cross-subsidies.
The Audit Commission cleared KCC of this but noted in a report that to allay concerns it needed to be more transparent about the activiites of its companies like Kent Top Temps and Kent Top Travel.
In response, the council set up a committee to oversee the various companies that together have a turnover of £400m a year, called the Governance and Audit Trading Activities Sub Group. Given the extent of KCC’s commercial trading companies, and in the face of an on-going trial involving fraud allegations, it is something of a surprise to discover that this committee has not met since May 2010

Are we to believe that there has been nothing of note to record about any aspect of commercial trading at KCC? Nothing like a high level independent review of the way they are governed, for example?