Tessera

FHDC’s draft 25/26 accounts say one thing in one place and something £4.135m different in another. That’s not missing money — it’s figures that don’t match. These are public accounts. They should add up, and taxpayers deserve to know how errors like this reached publication. shorturl.at/lbvZ8

£4.135m Apart: Why Folkestone & Hythe Council’s 2025/26 Accounts Won’t Add Up

Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s 2025/26 accounts are not final audited accounts. They are still draft, Grant Thornton’s audit opinion is still to come, and amendments can be made before t…

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FHDC’s audited accounts say the council group made a £12.7m surplus. Two pages later they say it made a £3m loss. That’s a £9.8m difference nobody clearly explained. The accounts were still checked, audited and approved. If that was missed, what else was? shorturl.at/PTbNC

The £9.769m That Doesn’t Add Up in Folkestone & Hythe Council’s Audited Accounts

There’s a figure in Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s 2024/25 audited accounts that should stop any reader cold. The Group Comprehensive Income and Expenditure Statement says the council gr…

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Benefit fraud gets the headlines. Crowe estimates local government fraud at £6.692bn — nearly as much as benefits and tax credits. Funny how the microscope gets sharper at the bottom. If billions are vanishing elsewhere, that deserves exactly the same fury. shorturl.at/IDILx

Benefits Fraud Gets the Headlines — Local Government Fraud Is Estimated at £6.7bn

Benefit fraud gets plenty of attention. But figures in the latest Annual Fraud Indicator show that estimated fraud against local government is running at almost the same cash value — and, measured …

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Shepway Vox @shepwayvox.bsky.social · last wk.

An elephant, a spreadsheet and a council savings target walk into Port Lympne. Only one of them leaves by air. 🐘💨 A tale of procurement, transformation, “lessons learned” and the eternal local-government question: is any of this actually real? shorturl.at/PRPtZ

Folkestone & Hythe’s Cost-Cutting Elephant Takes Off — Literally

A work of satire, inspired and adapted from Sławomir Mrożek’s short story “The Elephant”. The events described below are entirely fictional. It had been six months since Folkestone & Hythe Dist…

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3,207 people on foot were killed or injured on Kent and Medway’s roads between 2021 and 2025. Behind every number is someone walking to work, school, the shops or home. We’ve mapped where it happened — and the patterns are hard to ignore. shorturl.at/YQ5Sp

3,207 People on Foot Killed or Injured on Kent and Medway Roads, 2021–2025

Sixty-four pedestrians were killed on roads across Kent and Medway between 2021 and 2025. Another 840 were seriously injured. And beneath those two figures sits the most troubling finding in The Sh…

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Shepway Vox @shepwayvox.bsky.social · last wk.

Six days in A&E. Children among mental-health patients left waiting because specialist beds aren’t available. That isn’t a minor delay. It’s a system failing people at their most vulnerable — while frontline staff are left trying to hold it together. shorturl.at/W69SJ

Six Days in A&E: Children Among Mental-Health Patients Stuck in East Kent’s Emergency Departments

East Kent Hospitals’ own papers reveal one-to-six-day waits, two-hourly executive escalations and a shortage of specialist mental-health beds which the Trust says is not expected to ease imminently…

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Shepway Vox @shepwayvox.bsky.social · last wk.

Kent’s hedgehogs are telling us a story after dark. 🦔 We mapped 4,168 records across the county — revealing safe havens, danger spots and roads where too many never make it across. A small creature, but a powerful picture of the places we share. shorturl.at/Fhsz5

Kent After Dark: 4,168 Hedgehog Records Reveal a County of Safe Havens and Deadly Roads

Autumn is upon us, and it’s that time of year when our lovely prickly friends — hedgehogs — begin looking for somewhere safe to hole up until spring. A pile of leaves beneath a hedge, a tangle of b…

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Four years after Kirkup, East Kent maternity is still repeating known safety failures while babies die. “Systemic weakness” is management camouflage. People made these decisions. People failed to fix them. If accountability means anything, some should no longer be in post. shorturl.at/LMEty

East Kent Hospitals Maternity: Babies Are Still Dying — Four Years After Kirkup, Known Failures Remain

Babies have died. East Kent had already been warned. It had already been investigated. It had already been told what was wrong. It had already produced the plans, the committees, the pathways, the …

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Imagine being well enough to leave hospital — but having nowhere safe to go. That’s the reality for around 500 patients in Kent on a regular basis, while thousands more struggle to get through the NHS GP front door. We followed the blockage from GP surgery to hospital bed. shorturl.at/Po3jd

Kent’s NHS Is Clogged: 500 Patients Can’t Get Out — While Thousands Struggle to Get In

Getting into the health system is difficult. Getting out of it can be just as difficult. That, in simple terms, is the problem facing Kent and Medway. At one end, patients are struggling to see the…

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What can 18,400 crashes tell us about Kent and Medway’s roads? Quite a lot. We’ve mapped five years of collisions, 24,390 casualties and 252 deaths to show where crashes cluster, which roads stand out, and what the patterns might tell us. shorturl.at/32BEV

Where Kent & Medway Keep Crashing: 18,400 Collisions, 24,390 Casualties and 252 Deaths Mapped

Every dot on our map marks a journey in Kent or Medway which ended with somebody being injured. Between 1 January 2021 and 31 December 2025, police recorded 18,400 personal-injury road collisions a…

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Britannia once said its hotels were kept in a “continual state of sound repair”. Years later, the Burstin was described as in “desperate need of refurbishment”. Then came a suspicious fire, 90 displaced neighbours — and a trail leading to a Jersey trust. shorturl.at/O5n9x

Grand Burstin Hotel Investigation: Britannia Hotels, Alexander Langsam and the Moravcik Trust

At 1.06am on Saturday 19 September 2026, Kent Fire and Rescue Service was called to the Grand Burstin Hotel in Folkestone. At the height of the incident, 26 fire engines and specialist units were s…

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Three training sessions, several beers and one glass of local rocket fuel: enough to turn an Englishman abroad into a football manager. A 12–0 hiding followed. Then a 5–0 “improvement”. Then 2–0 against the league leaders. Obviously, it was all part of the system. shorturl.at/FmWlR

The Accidental English Football Manager: From a 12–0 Thrashing to Beating the League Leaders

This is a Guest Post Psst. Psst. Come closer. Closer. Now listen carefully, because what I’m about to tell you, good reader, is a secret. A secret so humiliating that, even after all these years, i…

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A writer, a bicycle, a village pub, two cows and a man who reckons Lycra disqualifies you from being a proper cyclist. Somehow, this is all “research”. The worrying bit? It worked. Perhaps the bicycle isn’t procrastination after all. Perhaps the desk is. shorturl.at/CK5lr

Why Writers Should Ride Bicycles — Einstein, Potholes and the Fine Art of Procrastination

There is a theory, usually attributed to Einstein, that life is rather like riding a bicycle: if you want to keep your balance, you have to keep moving. This seems reasonable until you remember tha…

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Back on 1 April, FHDC passed a motion promising urgent action on water quality Nearly six months later, there’s still no report Dymchurch and Littlestone remain Poor, swimmers are warned off & businesses are financially suffering. So what, exactly, happened to that “urgent” motion? shorturl.at/bNJh1

Poor Beaches, Damaged Businesses, No Report: FHDC’s ‘Urgent’ Water Quality Work Goes Nowhere

On 1 April 2026, Folkestone & Hythe District Council agreed that investigating water quality across Romney Marsh and the East Stour should happen “as a matter of urgency”. That wasn’t our…

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£750,000. That was the figure everyone heard for the Lower Leas playground. Now the costs tied to the scheme have gone past £1.38m. That’s a hell of a jump. We’ve followed the money to see how a three-quarter-million-pound project got here. shorturl.at/TawsJ

Lower Leas Coastal Park Playground: How a £750,000 Budget Grew to More Than £1.38 Million

It was supposed to be a £750,000 playground. That was the budget Folkestone & Hythe District Council approved in May 2025 for the long-awaited replacement of the ageing play area at Lower Leas …

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Nine months ago Storm Goretti gave Lydd a pretty brutal warning. Yet with autumn here and winter not far behind, the town still has no Community Resilience Plan. Storms don’t wait for paperwork. So if the next one hits hard, is Lydd actually ready? shorturl.at/V4xEn

Storm Goretti Was Lydd’s Warning — Nine Months Later, Its Community Resilience Plan Still Doesn’t Exist

As autumn closes in and another winter approaches, Lydd, like the rest of us towns and villages, is heading back into the season of strong winds, heavy rain, high seas and coastal storms. Yet nearl…

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Hundreds got out of the Grand Burstin alive. That’s the good news. But the fire has left Folkestone with some big questions — about the building, the people living next door, what happens next and whether this crisis is really over. shorturl.at/1vOGa

Grand Burstin Fire: How Hundreds Got Out Alive — and Why Folkestone’s Crisis Isn’t Over

Four days after flames and thick smoke poured from beneath Folkestone’s Grand Burstin Hotel, firefighters were back. At 8.36am on Wednesday, Kent Fire and Rescue Service was called after smoke was …

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FHDC approved £750,000 for the Lower Leas Coastal Park playground. The paper trail now points to £1.387m in linked playground, cliff, survey and enabling costs — 84.97% higher. £649,757 has already been paid. So how did £750k become £1.38m? shorturl.at/4gA29

Lower Leas Coastal Park Playground: How a £750,000 Budget Grew to More Than £1.38 Million

It was supposed to be a £750,000 playground. That was the budget Folkestone & Hythe District Council approved in May 2025 for the long-awaited replacement of the ageing play area at Lower Leas …

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FHDC called its water-quality work “urgent” on 1 April. 175 days later: no report, no sampling plan, no costed options. Meanwhile Dymchurch and Littlestone remain rated Poor for bathing water, with residents warned not to swim and local businesses counting the cost. shorturl.at/Q6m1q

Poor Beaches, Damaged Businesses, No Report: FHDC’s ‘Urgent’ Water Quality Work Goes Nowhere

On 1 April 2026, Folkestone & Hythe District Council agreed that investigating water quality across Romney Marsh and the East Stour should happen “as a matter of urgency”. That wasn’t our…

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Welcome to Dover’s new biometric border: queue politely, present passport, offer four fingers to the machine… and hope it’s in the mood. Ours wasn’t. After half an hour waiting, it promptly broke when we reached the front. The future has arrived. Sort of. tinyurl.com/4jy5xrys

Four Fingers, One Passport and a Prayer: Welcome to Dover’s Biometric Border

The British understand queues. We may have lost an empire,many Eurovision Song Contests and any realistic expectation of buying a railway sandwich without first discussing finance options, but by G…

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The English language has hundreds of thousands of words. So why do we keep reaching for the same f***ing one? A polite plea for a little more imagination, a little less verbal wallpaper — and perhaps the return of “Gordon Bennett” before it’s too late. tinyurl.com/dcdadxzx

The F-Word Took Over the English Language: We Have Hundreds of Thousands of Words — So Why Keep Using the Same F*ing One?**

There is a bus. You know the one. Every town has one. At roughly the same time every weekday afternoon, its doors wheeze open and several dozen teenagers pile aboard carrying rucksacks, phones, hal…

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In the final part of our Kent Police series, we look at racist officers, racial disparities and other uncomfortable evidence — and ask one simple question: Does Kent Police police everyone equally? “You might very well think that; We couldn't possibly comment.” tinyurl.com/bdexsxj2

Kent Police, Race and Power: When Does Disparity Become Institutional Racism? — Part Three

Racist misconduct has been proved against Kent Police officers. Black people are arrested at more than twice the White population rate and are substantially overrepresented in stop-and-search. The …

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For young people in Kent, postcode can shape opportunity. Canterbury has just 76 suitable entry-level vacancies per 1,000 young adults. Tonbridge & Malling has 258. That’s a 3.4-fold gap. For too many young people, the first rung of the jobs ladder is simply missing. tinyurl.com/32wjntcu

The First Rung Is Missing: Kent’s Stark Divide in Jobs for Young People

The postcode a young person calls home can make a huge difference to the number of realistic entry-level jobs around them. In Kent and Medway, the gap is enormous. New data from the Institute for P…

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FHDC used the word “fraud” about residents. Yet when asked how much of the £1.266m was actually fraud, Cllr Tim Prater couldn’t say — and called intent a “fuzzy line”. If you can’t prove intent, on what basis are people being labelled fraudsters? tinyurl.com/ycywd9hy

If Intent Is a ‘Fuzzy Line’, How Can FHDC Call It Fraud? Cllr Tim Prater and the £1.266m Question

When our public face asked Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s Cabinet Member for Finance and Governance how much of £1.266 million was actually fraud, Cllr Tim Prater (pictured) didn’t give …

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Something changed at Kent Police. In just one year, arrests of Black people soared by 79% — a rise far beyond anything seen among other ethnic groups. Part Two asks the obvious question: what changed, and why? The numbers deserve answers. tinyurl.com/yu6cc5k4

Something Changed at Kent Police: Black Arrests Soared 79% in One Year — Part Two

In Part One, we examined what happened on the streets of Dover, where hundreds of anti-migration protesters descended on the town, dressed in black and wearing balaclavas, roads around the Port of …

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FHDC’s language brands some residents as fraudsters, yet it still won’t say how many cases were actually fraud, what evidence proved intent, or how much was claimant error versus council/officer error. If you use the word fraud, show the evidence. shorturl.at/FtGMI

If Intent Is a ‘Fuzzy Line’, How Can FHDC Call It Fraud? Cllr Tim Prater and the £1.266m Question

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