Catch up on the latest political news from across Kent with Sofia Akin joined by Independent Councillor for Swale Mike Baldock and Labour Councillor from Ashford Diccon Spain.
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00:02 - Hello and welcome to the Kent Politics Show
00:25 live on KMTV.
00:27 I'm Sophia Akin and coming up on tonight's show,
00:30 residents in Swale, Maidstone and Ashford are furious
00:33 as their bins continue to go uncollected.
00:35 And a decision on the nine billion pound tunnel
00:38 connecting Kent to Essex has been pushed back
00:40 almost four months now the general election's been called.
00:44 And more transport news, we take a look into which areas
00:47 most rely on the Eurostar and whether services
00:50 should return to the county.
00:52 But first tonight, Swale Borough Council has issued
00:55 an apology to residents after reports of delays
00:57 collecting rubbish across the borough.
00:59 It follows the council's change service contractor
01:02 earlier this year, with some residents now saying
01:04 they've had delays of weeks on end.
01:07 The council says that in the long term,
01:08 changes to collection routes will improve resilience
01:11 but they need time to bed in.
01:13 Oliver Leeder de Sacks has the story.
01:15 - Since the end of March, a new rubbish service contract
01:18 between Swale Borough Council and Sewers Recycling
01:21 and Recovering UK came into effect.
01:24 But ever since the new contract started two months ago,
01:28 residents across Sittingbourne, Fathersham
01:30 and the Arles Sheppey have experienced
01:32 significant disruption after new waste collection routes
01:36 and vehicles were introduced.
01:38 - Yesterday morning, apparently they came down
01:41 and collected our neighbours down at number five
01:44 and they've left number fours and ours number one.
01:48 - Cheryl Moore has lived in Fathersham for decades.
01:51 She says she's never seen it so bad
01:54 and that garden and food waste are the biggest concerns.
01:58 - I get really angry because we have had weeks
02:01 with just bin bags stuck out here, absolutely going rank.
02:05 We've had one brown bin collection
02:07 since this company took over.
02:10 We've done numerous runs to the tip
02:13 to get rid of our garden rubbish
02:14 because it's the time of the year
02:15 when you obviously make more garden waste.
02:20 And last week, we even had to take our food waste up
02:22 because it stank and it was full of maggots
02:25 and they've left it again today.
02:27 - As you can see, it's quite a sunny day
02:29 here on Nelson Street
02:30 and these food bins have not been collected,
02:33 meaning they're starting to stink quite a bit.
02:36 You can smell the rot in the air, flies buzzing around.
02:40 It's only gonna get worse as the summer goes on.
02:44 Residents say it's not good enough.
02:46 - We've lived here for,
02:47 well, I've lived here for nearly 30 years
02:50 and just the other day,
02:51 I saw the first rat I've ever seen in the vicinity.
02:54 In the early days, we got forgotten completely.
02:58 My wife has probably rung the council 20, 30 times,
03:02 each time to be told, yes, we'll do something about it,
03:05 and very little happens.
03:06 I mean, for a period of about two or three weeks, it was okay,
03:09 but then it seems to have gone downhill again.
03:11 - In an open letter apology released on Tuesday,
03:14 the Labour leader of the council, Tim Gibson,
03:17 and Green Chair of the Environment
03:19 and Climate Change Committee, Rich Layman,
03:21 say they are working hard to improve services.
03:24 They say the changes will lead to a more resilient service,
03:27 but that they will need time before this can be achieved.
03:31 The council say they don't feel the current level of service
03:34 is acceptable and fixing it is a top priority,
03:37 but it will still take a lot from the council
03:40 to convince people here in Fathersham
03:42 they aren't talking a load of rubbish.
03:44 Oliver, Leader of the SACs for KMTV.
03:47 - Joining me today is Councillor Mike Bulldog,
03:50 Deputy Leader at Swale Borough Council,
03:52 and Councillor Dickin Spain,
03:53 Deputy Leader of Ashford Council's Labour Party.
03:56 Thanks to both of you for joining us.
03:57 Now, problems for both of you in your areas.
04:00 I wanted to start with you, Mike.
04:03 The problem seems to be particularly bad in Swale,
04:05 some residents saying that bins
04:07 haven't been collected for weeks.
04:08 And this originally started in April,
04:10 shortly after the new contract with Suez,
04:13 where it apologised, but two months on,
04:15 the problem's still happening.
04:16 And you said to me that lots of residents
04:18 have been speaking to you about this.
04:20 - Yeah, I'm contacted every day on different Facebook pages.
04:25 It seems to be borough-wide that there are problems.
04:30 And some areas are getting collected fine.
04:33 It's about 70% of the borough
04:37 is actually getting a good service.
04:38 So it's knuckling down and trying to find out
04:41 what is going wrong in these other areas.
04:44 We report the same issues in week after week.
04:48 The same odd spots keep getting missed.
04:53 And it doesn't seem to have any rhyme or reason behind it.
04:58 It's just a failing service at the moment.
05:01 - And there's been a letter written
05:03 to residents apologising, but they seem to have lost hope
05:07 and kind of don't have a lot of faith
05:09 that actually it's going to get better.
05:11 And there was supposed to be a meeting on the 17th of June,
05:14 which has been rescheduled because of the general election,
05:17 as many things have.
05:18 So I guess their concern is that this problem
05:21 could be getting pushed further down the road
05:22 if things aren't being discussed
05:23 of how to alleviate the problem.
05:25 - The 17th of June meeting was to look at the process,
05:30 look and see why it happened as it was.
05:33 I don't think it would have actually had
05:35 any significant impact on improving it.
05:39 That work's going on all the time anyway.
05:41 So this meeting wouldn't,
05:43 if the fact this meeting has been cancelled,
05:46 doesn't mean that we're taking our eyes off the ball of it.
05:48 It's going to take longer to get sorted.
05:50 It just means that we can't have a stand up row in public.
05:54 - And Dickon, the same problem in Ashford,
05:58 you were also just saying that people are contacting you
06:00 nonstop about this, but it's a service
06:02 that residents are paying for with their council tax.
06:05 So some of them might think,
06:06 I no longer want to pay my council tax
06:08 or I want a reduction if the services
06:09 aren't being fulfilled properly.
06:11 - Well, I can absolutely understand the anger from people
06:14 and it's totally justified.
06:16 It's completely unacceptable.
06:18 The council are working very hard to put this right
06:23 through the contract to Suez,
06:25 but at the end of the day,
06:26 it's a contract that they need to fulfill.
06:28 So as one of the things we are doing
06:31 is we are calling them in, the senior managers
06:33 or the chief executive, I think, is coming in next week
06:38 and he will be answering to the councillors
06:40 as to what is going on,
06:43 exactly what he intends to do about it.
06:45 I mean, there is already a lot of contact
06:48 between officers and Suez in terms of trying
06:50 to understand what's going on and trying to improve things.
06:53 There's definitely activity from officers
06:57 in terms of making sure that the reporting
07:00 coming in from residents is as smooth as possible.
07:03 But all of us councillors are getting absolutely inundated
07:06 with emails, as I know Mike has been,
07:10 emails, stuff going on on Facebook.
07:12 So it's a mess.
07:15 It's not acceptable.
07:16 Am I right in thinking that, I mean,
07:18 I believe for Swale, it's an eight-year contract.
07:20 I know there's like a three-month grace period
07:22 to kind of test the waters, but with this contract,
07:25 does that mean that it has to be fulfilled
07:27 for all eight years or after the three months,
07:29 can you kind of reassess if you want to stick with Suez?
07:31 I think the three months is the period
07:34 in which we can't take any financial action
07:36 against them.
07:37 I think the eight-year contract will be monitored.
07:44 Are you confident, I guess, services will start to improve?
07:49 They'd better.
07:50 We're not gonna tolerate this indefinitely.
07:53 They took on a large contract.
07:58 They should know what they took on.
08:00 They should be able to deliver.
08:04 This current standard of service is not acceptable.
08:08 We expect improvements.
08:10 And from the end of June, I would expect
08:14 that everything is running as well as it used to.
08:17 Now, let's talk about Ashford again.
08:21 We heard from the Conservative MP candidate
08:24 in Ashford, Damien Green, who's been speaking
08:26 about this on his socials, also saying
08:28 that he has been inundated with emails about this.
08:31 We can hear it from him now.
08:33 I'm getting increasing numbers of emails
08:35 about the problems with bin collections across the borough.
08:39 And I just wanted to reassure everyone
08:41 that I am passing all of these on to Ashford Borough Council
08:44 who are responsible for the bin collections
08:48 so that they know immediately where the problem areas are.
08:52 And I hope they can clean them all up as soon as possible
08:56 because I know how annoying and irritating it is
08:59 if your bins aren't collected efficiently.
09:02 Dickon, I suppose some people or some other councillors
09:07 might say that this is just a responsibility
09:10 for the leaders of the council,
09:11 but I guess it also comes down to other parties
09:14 lobbying the leaders and trying to kind of come together
09:17 with some solution.
09:18 How much of this comes down to a cross-party agreement?
09:22 I think, to use a sort of phrase,
09:24 we are all in it together.
09:26 I mean, a lot of the councillors are experiencing
09:27 exactly the same problems as residents anyway.
09:30 So, you know, we are residents,
09:31 so we are experiencing these kind of issues ourselves.
09:34 All the councillors I know are all being inundated
09:38 in the same way as Damien has just mentioned.
09:42 They are all getting phone calls,
09:43 they are all getting emails,
09:44 they are all getting stuff on local Facebook groups.
09:47 And we are all putting pressure on the coalition
09:51 that is running things within the council
09:53 to actually find ways of putting this right.
09:56 But there is only so much you can do.
09:59 But I think the really positive move,
10:01 from our perspective in Ashford,
10:03 is to get the senior management in
10:06 and ask those difficult questions.
10:08 I mean, behind the scenes,
10:10 those kind of questions are being asked,
10:11 but I think it is important that the councillors
10:13 get that chance to actually put them under pressure
10:15 and scrutinise what exactly they are doing
10:18 about this service.
10:19 And exactly as Mike said,
10:21 you know, it is something we have spent a lot of time
10:24 putting together as a contract.
10:25 It is very clear what they are supposed to be offering,
10:28 and they said that they could offer this service.
10:30 So, we need to get it working as soon as possible.
10:33 The grace period, I think Mike mentioned,
10:35 is 24th of June.
10:37 That will be the end of the three months.
10:40 I think the phrase about bedding in, that is fine,
10:42 but there is a limit.
10:43 You know, you expect things to be a few teething problems.
10:46 This is way beyond that.
10:47 - So, what is the limit?
10:48 How far can it go before, I guess,
10:49 the councils think, right, we need to go elsewhere now?
10:53 - Well, that is easy to say,
10:55 but the reality of a big contract,
10:58 especially with three councils using the same supplier,
11:03 these are very difficult things to set up.
11:05 These are huge tasks.
11:06 So, the reality of trying to drop something
11:08 and pick something else up is pretty much a non-starter.
11:12 We need to find a way of actually making this work.
11:14 - So, if the services continue to not, I guess,
11:18 all the bin collections being met,
11:21 would you still continue to go with them
11:22 or would it get to the point where you have to--
11:25 - We can start fining them.
11:27 - Yeah.
11:28 - And I imagine,
11:29 well, we'll be looking at issuing those fines
11:34 on poor service straight away.
11:35 There's not gonna be a further grace period.
11:39 We've already had a long enough period
11:41 for them to get it right.
11:43 So, yeah.
11:43 - Well, thank you to you both.
11:46 It's time for a break now,
11:47 but coming up we'll be talking about more issues
11:50 from across Kent.
11:51 I'll see you in a few minutes.
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15:06 - Hello and welcome back to the Kent Politics Show
15:12 live on KMTV.
15:14 Now more than 55,000 have signed a petition
15:17 to see Eurostar services restored to Kent.
15:20 Trains into Europe from Ebbsfleet and Ashford
15:23 haven't ran since before the pandemic,
15:25 but this week there was chaos for passengers
15:27 after new UK Border Force IT systems malfunctioned.
15:31 And it's renewed calls to restore the services in Kent
15:34 to alleviate pressures elsewhere.
15:36 Well, still with me now is Councillor Mike Baldock,
15:39 the Deputy Leader at Swale Borough Council
15:41 and Councillor Dickens Payne,
15:42 the Deputy Leader of Ashford Council's Labour Party.
15:46 Thanks to both of you for sticking around.
15:48 I think it makes sense to start with you on this one,
15:50 Dickens, talking about the Eurostar,
15:53 which we've not seen the services here
15:55 since before the pandemic.
15:57 And I guess seeing over the weekend,
15:59 seeing the pressure that it's put on London St Pancras,
16:03 the minute the IT system starts to go down,
16:05 it puts pressure on London, doesn't it?
16:08 So I guess you would argue that the services
16:11 should be restored to Kent.
16:13 - I think the robustness of services
16:15 is an interesting one because there was a flooding incident
16:17 in the tunnel under the Thames a few months back
16:20 and that highlighted the problem with no capacity
16:23 to actually receive or process passengers
16:25 south of the Thames.
16:27 That does make the whole system reliant on St Pancras
16:29 as the single sort of point
16:32 where passengers join or leave the train.
16:34 I think, I mean, the most important thing
16:37 about the Eurostar service
16:38 is the potential positive impact on the economy.
16:42 We had a recent web event with Bring Back Eurotrains
16:46 and we had a businessman, local businessman,
16:48 run several companies and he said the impact
16:51 of not having Eurostar there over the last two years
16:54 was a million pounds lost revenue
16:57 and then another million pounds lost in investment.
17:01 So, and that's just one company.
17:02 If you multiply that up by the number of companies
17:04 that are impacted across Kent, that's a huge impact.
17:08 So there's a huge upside to getting them back,
17:10 which could create a lot of jobs
17:11 and a lot of opportunities.
17:13 And I think there's a tendency to look at the south-east
17:16 as a wealthy area.
17:18 It isn't a wealthy area.
17:20 There are obviously pockets of wealth,
17:21 but a lot of areas desperately need new jobs
17:24 and something like Bring Back Eurostar
17:25 would make a huge difference.
17:27 Or the international services, whether it's Eurostar
17:30 or one of the incoming competitors.
17:32 Yeah, and I guess it is not just people trying to use
17:37 the Eurostar to go on holiday, isn't it?
17:38 It's businesses relying on it
17:39 and also businesses deciding on whether to,
17:42 I guess, set up in a certain area.
17:44 You know, they're looking at their five, ten year plans,
17:47 looking at kind of how they can operate.
17:50 And if they're unsure of whether the Eurostar
17:52 is going to be returning,
17:53 they're unsure of whether they want to stay.
17:54 So that impacts all of Kent, doesn't it?
17:57 Yeah, and I think it's absolutely appalling
18:00 the amount of housing that Ashford got
18:03 because of the Eurostar that it had to take.
18:06 And all the development, all the infrastructure for parking
18:09 around Ebbsfleet, you know, they were building up this
18:12 on the promise of these international rail services.
18:18 And it has been taken.
18:21 I just think our government should have said no.
18:24 You know, they should have just insisted
18:27 that there had to continue to be a service.
18:30 People in, you know, Canterbury, Sittingbourne,
18:35 we don't want to have to go up to London
18:37 to then join the Eurorail.
18:38 Then come back on yourself.
18:39 Yeah, it's absolutely ludicrous.
18:42 And as you say, the impact on businesses is huge as well.
18:46 This is a situation that any government
18:49 with a bit of backbone would have insisted didn't happen.
18:54 And it's just as usual.
18:57 Everybody thinks about London
18:58 and people at Kent just get overlooked.
19:01 It's an absolutely diabolical decision.
19:04 I think this is why we need to change our attitude
19:07 to how we're viewing Ebbsfleet and Ashford.
19:09 They should be viewed as regional hubs.
19:11 And I think increasingly they are that
19:14 and they will become better,
19:15 but they need the type of attention
19:18 to make the most of them.
19:19 So in terms of incoming transport links
19:22 and that kind of thing, but also really to make sure
19:28 that we put the, these are unused assets.
19:31 If we're serious about being number one in the G7
19:34 in terms of growth,
19:35 that growth doesn't just magically appear.
19:38 It has to come from somewhere.
19:39 And to have unused assets that are taxpayer funded
19:43 and we've got HS1, our only high-speed line,
19:46 67 miles, £6 billion worth of taxpayer money.
19:50 That's our line.
19:51 We should actually have a service
19:52 that stops at Ashford and Ebbsfleet.
19:54 And I wanted to ask you,
19:56 we saw Labour actually unveiling plans
19:58 to bring railways back into public ownership,
20:01 but bring back Eurotrains has asked them to think
20:04 about the international rails.
20:05 And I saw that you were also in favour of this.
20:08 So is that critical of Labour?
20:10 Would you say? Are you being critical?
20:12 I think I was really positive about the domestic strategy,
20:16 which is really good,
20:17 putting passengers at the centre of things.
20:19 That's great, but there was a gap
20:21 and we couldn't really just sit to one side
20:24 and not remark on that.
20:26 There needs to be a coherent international strategy
20:29 for international rail.
20:31 It's such a great boon for the country.
20:33 We can get this right.
20:35 And as I said on one of my tweets,
20:37 there's a huge pool of potential customers.
20:39 So there's 1.37 million customers
20:43 within a 40 mile circle of Ashford,
20:45 which would bring in Hastings.
20:47 We know there's demand from there and Canterbury,
20:49 right the way out to Thanet.
20:51 Ebbsfleet, there's an even bigger set of people,
20:53 about just over 2 million people
20:55 within 20 kilometres of Ebbsfleet.
20:58 But it works the other way as well.
21:00 You know, we're trying to get tourism to Kent.
21:03 We're trying to get people to come to Kent
21:05 and visit our attractions, our countryside.
21:09 We don't want people going straight to London
21:10 because they're not going to come back down
21:11 into Kent and visit us.
21:13 If they come in, stop in Kent,
21:16 and spend a week or weekend in Kent
21:18 and then move on to somewhere else,
21:20 that's keeping our industries going.
21:22 That's keeping our tourist attractions going.
21:24 We're losing that.
21:26 And sticking with transport, but somewhere else in Kent,
21:30 the decision on the Lower Thames crossing
21:33 has been delayed by six months
21:35 because of the general election.
21:37 There was due to be a meeting imminently to discuss that,
21:40 now been pushed back to the 4th of October.
21:42 But this has been spoken about for 15 years.
21:45 I think some people are starting to think,
21:46 is it ever going to happen?
21:48 So much money has already been spent.
21:50 And this is something that particularly would benefit
21:53 those parts of North Kent like Swales.
21:56 So I wanted to ask you about that
21:58 and about this decision to push the meeting back slightly.
22:03 How do you feel about the Lower Thames crossing?
22:05 In some parts it would be good for business, wouldn't it?
22:07 No, I think it would be absolutely dreadful
22:09 because what they've done,
22:11 apart from the fact it's an ecological disaster,
22:15 they've spaffed billions on it already,
22:18 and it hasn't even got a spade in the ground.
22:20 But what they're not going to do is improve connections
22:24 between the A2/M2 corridor and the A20/M20 corridor.
22:28 So you've got all that traffic coming through on the M2,
22:32 but no plans to widen it.
22:34 It's already absolutely congested.
22:36 So all you're doing is bringing traffic,
22:38 a lot of it HGVs, onto a network that is over capacity already.
22:44 So it's another one of these,
22:46 got a little idea here, a little idea,
22:48 there's no joined up thinking,
22:49 there's no joined up strategy for this country
22:51 or this part of the country.
22:53 And that Lower Thames crossing
22:56 is just a disaster waiting to happen.
22:58 I mean, part of it is hoping to take congestion
23:01 off the Dartford crossing, which is Kent's busiest road.
23:04 We know that the Dartford crossing already takes
23:06 so many more cars than it's meant to.
23:09 I wanted to ask you about that as well, Dickon.
23:11 I mean, what are your thoughts on it?
23:12 Do you agree with Mike?
23:13 Well, the question I think is,
23:16 is spending nine billion,
23:17 because I think that's the price ticket
23:19 on the Lower Thames crossing, nine billion,
23:20 is that a sensible thing to spend nine billion pounds on?
23:24 I think probably the answer is no.
23:26 I mean, we had a very interesting meeting
23:28 with the guys from Kennex,
23:30 as the proposal to put a tram line across
23:33 under the Thames from linking Kent and Essex.
23:36 Now, what was fascinating about that,
23:38 and it would link by bus down to Ebbsfleet,
23:41 so it supports the sort of regional hub element of Ebbsfleet,
23:45 is that what the guys are saying about the level of demand
23:49 for that crossing, I think there was,
23:50 there was a ferry that's now shut down.
23:52 So there was school kids, people working,
23:55 that were using that ferry to get from one side to the other.
23:58 They're saying there's about 30,000 kind of jobs,
24:02 unfilled sort of vacancy jobs in Essex.
24:04 There's people from Kent that could go across
24:06 and fill those jobs.
24:07 Now, a lot of people that are making that journey
24:11 are now either forced to do something different,
24:13 and goodness only knows what they're doing
24:15 with the school kids,
24:16 but they're probably making more journeys.
24:19 So if we can take some of that pressure off Dartford Crossing
24:22 by getting those people onto mass transit,
24:25 that's got to be a much better way,
24:27 a much better thing to do.
24:28 And that's only a tenth, that's less than a tenth,
24:30 I think, of the cost of the Lower Thames Crossing.
24:33 - So you're talking about the Tilbury ferries?
24:35 - Yeah.
24:36 - A lot of people, I think more people, though,
24:38 rely on their cars, surely, though, don't they?
24:40 So many people need their cars to get from A to B.
24:42 They don't just need to get to Tilbury.
24:43 - If there's an alternative.
24:44 - Yeah.
24:46 We've got to snap out of this thinking where we,
24:48 and I'm as guilty as a lot of people of doing this,
24:50 you just think, "Well, I'll get in my car."
24:52 But I think we need to find ways of making it much easier
24:55 to get a lot of people around.
24:57 I used to work up in Croydon,
24:59 and the tram system up there is absolutely brilliant.
25:03 And each tram is getting, you know,
25:04 100 plus, 150 people out of cars into a tram.
25:09 So it's incredibly efficient.
25:10 So if we can set that up, that'll make the,
25:13 in fact, for anybody that has to still use the roads,
25:16 that's going to make the roads a lot less--
25:17 - So looking at public transport, would you agree, Mike?
25:20 - Oh, absolutely, yeah. - Looking at public transport.
25:23 - Yeah.
25:24 For me, it's a no-brainer.
25:26 I think we've, and with the sustainability side
25:29 and the climate commitments as well,
25:31 we've got to look at sensible ways of--
25:33 - Well, yeah, I mean, 'cause they want to use hydrogen
25:35 rather than diesel vehicles.
25:37 So they say it's going to be the greenest roads.
25:39 They are looking at those climate commitments.
25:40 - Roads by themselves are not green roads.
25:44 - I guess the way they're looking at it,
25:45 using hydrogen rather than diesel.
25:47 - But they're still trying to rely on the old ways
25:50 of working society.
25:53 And they're still assuming that people will still have
25:55 to make, form our journeys every day for commuting.
25:59 What they should be doing is saying,
26:00 let's take away the need for that commuting.
26:03 Let's put houses in London
26:05 so that the prices might start coming down.
26:07 And let's put jobs out in the suburbs
26:10 so that people can work and live
26:12 within a reasonable travelling distance.
26:14 Not two hours there, two hours back, 28 hours.
26:18 That is just hideous.
26:19 - I think that's a really interesting point
26:21 about trying to look at employment.
26:23 I think we need to revisit employment.
26:24 Obviously with the pandemic, things shifted a bit.
26:26 And so that did cause some problems in cities
26:29 in terms of shops not getting the support
26:31 they might have from offices still going.
26:33 But I think distributing those employment opportunities
26:37 out to suburban areas, and I would include villages as well
26:40 so that you've got good spaces
26:43 where people can work together,
26:45 not necessarily in the same company, but shared spaces.
26:47 - Running out of time, I'm afraid.
26:49 But thank you to both of you for joining us.
26:51 See you very soon. - Very much.
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