By Confederation of Kent Green Parties
v5 – Sunday 16th November 2025
People tell us that they want real improvement in council services. No more cuts, no council tax hikes, they say. And Kent people want councils to listen when there’s problem with bins or bus services, with potholes or luxury property developers. Will the hurried Local Government Reorganisation by ministers in London, deliver what we want?
Green Parties in Kent support ending the separation of services between councils, to make them more efficient. Unitary authorities, instead of Kent Council Council, Medway and 12 existing district councils, could make sense, but only if this streamlining results in change for the better.
But to avoid change for the worse, we need real consultation, and due respect from ministers for the results of consultation. After 14 years of cuts to local government, reorganisation done by an authoritarian central government, obsessed by cost-cutting, heedless of the need to invest in our communities, will make things worse, not better.
Kent is collapsing under the increasing burdens of social care, Special Educational Needs provision and inadequate infrastructure in our strategic county. Funding for these essentials has been progressively strangled by successive Westminster governments. Councils are faced with spiraling emergency housing costs because there are not enough genuinely affordable homes in our towns and villages. The poorest districts of Kent have the highest costs to meet. But the powerful development lobby dodges the need for new social housing in Kent towns. Space for food-growing fields, for our carbon-capturing natural environment, is not liked by this lobby, or by this central government either.
In November 2025, after the financial study by KPMG, most Kent council leaders are backing the division of Kent into either 3 or 4 unitary authorities. Between them, these new unitary councils will inherit the responsibilities for 1.9million residents in 2027. They will also inherit the debts of previous councils.
The costs of making the changes could be £10m to £20million. Ministers decide but central government offers little support, only £514,000. Savings will take years to achieve. After 2027, fewer councillors will be answerable to many more residents because the unitaries will cover much larger populations, much larger territories. Kent residents will have less say over highways, planning, buses and bins, than now. Future savings will be at the expense of local representation. To add insult to injury, the changes will make it tougher for working-age people to become councillors.
The new government minister, Steve Reed MP, on 28 Oct 2025, announced Surrey would have only two new Unitary Authorities, UAs, despite a consultation that showed 56% of those consulted, including 8 of 10 district councils, preferred three. He stated, “The two unitary proposal is more likely to be financially sustainable. [Unitary authorities] will see quicker decisions to speed up housebuilding and get vital infrastructure projects moving”. Kent Green Parties are very concerned by this statement and this decision. It shows a failure to put communities before developers.
For people, and communities, to be heard when they have problems with council services, we believe government should stick to its own guidelines of creating unitary authorities to cover 500,000 people at most; not more, not three-quarters of a million. Viable proposals to divide Kent into 4 UAs, would result in an average of 474,275 people in each UA area, giving more responsive local government than a smaller number of much larger UAs.
Central government should tax the assets of those with the broadest shoulders, to fund properly this reorganisation so that no districts of Kent face future cuts in services. Services are already cut to the bone; we need improvements! Kent deserves much better than reorganisation done on the cheap, which will make things worse.
Community voice on planning must not be weakened to advantage the property development lobby. We people of Kent have always Cared About our Back Yard, as unashamed CAMBYs, we care about our ‘Garden of England’. And we want genuinely affordable homes for local Kent residents, especially the young, to rent or buy.
We desperately need to see trust in government restored. We need plans that are made together with us in Kent, that use money carefully to serve the long-term needs of our Kent communities. We need reorganisation for the better. Kent Green Parties urge central government in London to stop ignoring our needs, to seek and respect our views, so as to achieve a better form of Local Government Reorganisation.