Catch up with all the latest news from across the county with Abby Hook.
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00:00Hello, good evening and welcome to Kent Tonight, live on KMTV.
00:28I'm Abbey Hook, here are your top stories on Friday, the 2nd of May.
00:33Kent decides Reform UK takes control of Kent County Council in the local elections.
00:40The cost of policing.
00:42New report shows officers in Kent feel worse off than they did five years ago.
00:48And on the decline, the county's bug population drops by more than 60% in four years.
00:54But to our main story, of course, this evening, there's been a seismic shift in Kent's political history today.
01:03The county was painted in a slightly different shade of blue.
01:07Reform UK has taken full control of Kent County Council with a huge 57 seats.
01:12The Conservatives haven't budged since 1997, but after nearly three decades in control, they've come away with just five seats.
01:22Well, our local democracy reporter Gabriel Morris is at Reform's party this evening, not in a political sense this time, in Tunbridge.
01:30Gabriel, Nigel Farage is expected imminently.
01:33And to bring the party down south, he must have been pretty positive he'd win, especially like this.
01:39Exactly. I'll tell you what, in the last few moments, a helicopter has just landed.
01:46I'm going to talk loudly because they're pumping out the music.
01:48They've got a stage, they've got a live band playing.
01:52This is going to be a big celebration, not just for Kent, but for Reform UK on a whole national level today.
01:58Winners from all across the country will be here today.
02:02And, of course, all of those seats that they won on Kent County Council, those councillors, newly elected, will be here today.
02:09Now, this is completely unprecedented, what Nigel Farage and Reform UK have done to Kent County Council.
02:17We've had a Portillo moment with the previous leader of Kent County Council, the Conservative, Roger Gough.
02:22He lost his seat in Sevenoaks, which is as strong as a Conservative seat can get.
02:28And during this whole election, there's been one issue which has been playing a part.
02:33And that's not anything to do with the services Kent County Council run.
02:36They haven't been talking about adult social care. They haven't been talking about potholes.
02:40All the parties have been scared of reform. And I think they were right, as we've seen today.
02:46Now, I've been taking a look at some of those concerns from the other parties.
02:50One issue has dominated this campaign, and it's not potholes, adult social care or children with special educational needs.
03:04In fact, it's not any of the services Kent County Council actually runs.
03:10When parties speak to the media, they often steer the conversation towards one thing, the threat posed by Reform UK.
03:17We believe we have a strong record, that we've seen Kent through really difficult times,
03:23and that this is not the time to trust the really important affairs of the County Council to people who simply rely on slogans.
03:31Is that Reform UK?
03:32You may judge that, but I couldn't possibly comment.
03:35Nigel Farage has visited Kent twice during the campaign, stopping in all corners of the county.
03:41Some political groups have criticised Reform UK's campaign, calling it misleading,
03:46saying their slogans focus on issues the County Council doesn't even control.
03:52They've just put absolute nonsense on their leaflets, things that can't be delivered by KCC,
03:57and they've just basically been misleading people.
03:59What sort of things have they been putting on their leaflets, have you seen?
04:01Stopping the boats. Obviously that's government policy, where the Labour government's working with France,
04:07not Rwanda, which is the sensible thing to do,
04:10but a civilised society just runs on structured immigration, which should be happening.
04:17They've been putting on things about planning, planning issues, which are districts.
04:21We put that criticism to Reform UK's current Kent leader.
04:25He defended the campaign without hesitation.
04:27The migrant issue does have an impact because we've got people stuck in bad housing socially,
04:33mould, and yet other people are coming in and getting facilities and treatment, money,
04:39and there is a disconnect. People feel there's an unfairness that we've got a lot of people
04:42really suffering, and they really are having a dreadful time,
04:46and then seeing the opposite, where money seems to be coming from nowhere to fund services,
04:51thinking that, you know, this is not fairness, this is not good for our own citizens.
04:54Reform UK has quickly made its presence felt across Kent.
04:59Before the elections, they held just three councillors,
05:02but after a string of by-election wins, and as counting got underway this afternoon,
05:08their growing success became clear.
05:10OK, Gabriel, I think...
05:13Exactly, they took...
05:14Oh, I think different people are starting...
05:16You carry on, Abby.
05:16Different people are sort of starting to arrive behind you.
05:19It looks quite bright there, that picture behind you,
05:22but I imagine it will get busier and busier waiting for that address from Nigel Farage.
05:27Yeah, in the next half hour or so, we're expected to see the winners making their way up onto the stage,
05:34and Nigel Farage will be giving what he's calling a thank-you speech to members who are here,
05:39and also some of those 57 councillors across Kent who won in this monumental election.
05:44Now, these councillors in the majority now are going to have a big challenge.
05:49Kent County Council's budgets are in a dire situation.
05:52Nigel Farage and his party, they've promised to bring Doge-style politics here to the county,
05:59and they're going to go for a look at some efficiencies.
06:01Now, the other parties, particularly Conservatives, have been quick to say,
06:04well, haven't we thought about doing that before?
06:06So it's going to be interesting to see what reform do you find.
06:09If anything, it is going to be an uphill challenge,
06:12and what they will now have is a lot of scrutiny on them.
06:16Is that what they're going to want ahead of the next general election?
06:19Well, we're going to have some sort of local government reorganisation in the next few years.
06:24This is probably the last Kent County Council.
06:26It's historic, as it's now gone to reform.
06:30All right, Gabriel Morris, our local democracy reporter there in Tunbridge at Reform's party.
06:36Gabriel, thank you very much for those details throughout today as well.
06:39Right, while it's been a day reform can certainly celebrate,
06:43other parties have had significant gains, both locally and nationally too.
06:47Well, we're turning over to Oli Leder now.
06:50He joins us from outside County Hall.
06:52Oli, take us through some of those headlines for the other parties here in Kent.
06:58Well, Abi, you heard the noise there at Gabriel's Live.
07:03We're at the reform party.
07:05Here is all about the quiet.
07:08I've seen Conservative MPs come and go through those doors
07:11without saying a word, collecting their things from their offices.
07:14Of course, they only gained, got five seats.
07:18They lost 52.
07:20But the other party that did quite well were the Liberal Democrats.
07:25They got 12 seats.
07:27That's an increase from 2021.
07:29And they are feeling quietly confident they're going to be the opposition
07:33in this final stretch of Kent County Council.
07:37And the Greens didn't do too badly either.
07:40They haven't.
07:41They made gains up from 2021.
07:44There's now five people in their group.
07:47That rivals the Conservatives.
07:50But of course, all eyes are on Reform UK.
07:53How are they going to lead the council?
07:55What are their priorities?
07:56And I spoke to one of the newly elected councillors, Lyndon Cam-Karron.
08:04She has put herself forward as a potential runner
08:07for the Kent County Council leadership.
08:10And this is what she had to say about the first few days of reform
08:14here in the county.
08:16I think there are several reasons.
08:18There are numerous reasons why Kent went turquoise.
08:21But the primary one is people are very, very angry.
08:24There's a depth of anger and frustration on the doorstep
08:28that I don't think I've ever seen before.
08:30People feel they've been ignored.
08:32They've been sidelined.
08:33They've been lied to by politicians who have sought their vote
08:36in exchange for what they thought was going to get them a better life.
08:39People thought they were going to be more prosperous,
08:41have more money left at the end of every month,
08:43see better services for their council tax.
08:45None of that has happened.
08:47And people are fed up.
08:48And the issue that came up again and again on the doorstep
08:51was, of course, immigration.
08:53Now, I know that's not under Kent County Council's control,
08:54but it is something that is affecting everybody's life here in Kent.
09:00Yeah, Olin, she also spoke to you about potentially running for leader as well.
09:08But tell me a bit about the outgoing leader,
09:10because he's been in that post for a long, a long time.
09:15So it will certainly be different for him personally as well,
09:18something he's been speaking with Gabriel Morris,
09:21who's been in Seven Oaks today,
09:25seeing the result of that count,
09:27and actually how emotional this whole process can really be.
09:31It is politics, but there are people behind the politics at the end of the day.
09:34Tell us a bit about what it means for the Conservatives now.
09:37It's a strange one, isn't it?
09:40Because I don't think there's people behind the scenes at Kent County Council
09:44that talk about knowing Roger for 16 years.
09:47Roger Goff, the man who's led Kent County Council
09:50through numerous governments, through numerous economic hardships,
09:54and he's no longer going to be even a councillor here at Kent County Council.
10:00And earlier on, he described this turquoise tidal wave as apocalyptic for his party,
10:07who have been dominant here in Kent for decades.
10:1128 years of Conservative rule ended today,
10:15and this is what Roger Goff had to say about the rise of reform.
10:20Well, clearly it is deeply disappointing.
10:24Some of these are communities that I've represented for 20 years
10:28and sought to do so to the best of my ability.
10:31And none of us likes losing elections.
10:34Having said which, the scale, I think, of what's happening,
10:38not just across this county, but also across the country.
10:41Where do you go from here? What's next for yourself, Roger?
10:44I think I might actually enjoy the fact that this is an end to a period of 60-hour weeks,
10:49which has been the case for basically the last five and a half years.
10:52And then I'll look to my next set of options.
10:55And I think there are a few things there, but let me work on that.
10:59It is a time, clearly, to start a new chapter in life.
11:05And Oli, we can't not talk about Labour.
11:07People will be sitting at home wondering,
11:08why aren't we seeing red on our tellies all day?
11:11Of course, they run the government up in Westminster,
11:13but we haven't seen much.
11:15And perhaps that's why we didn't see much,
11:19because for the last couple of months,
11:21they haven't been polling particularly well.
11:23They've had a few policies that haven't gone down well with people here in Kent,
11:27particularly in some of the more economically-deprived parts of the county.
11:32And they are geographically locked into that Canterbury safe seat area
11:37that they have held for a long period of time.
11:41There's been quite a lot of Labour losses.
11:43It's going to put a lot of things into the party
11:46about how they can bring people back in.
11:50Because obviously, they do have a last-minute election here,
11:52and that hasn't materialised almost a year on at the local elections.
11:55All right, Oli, thank you very much.
11:57Time for us to take a quick break.
14:58Hello and welcome back to Kent Tonight, live on KMTV.
15:14Now, a new report reveals that 75% of Kent Police officers feel worse off financially
15:21than they were five years ago, with many struggling to cover essentials like food and rent.
15:26The Kent Police Federation survey also shows high stress levels and low morale,
15:31with 17% of officers planning to leave the force soon, raising concerns for community safety.
15:37Well, Neil Menny, chair of Kent Police Federation, chair of Kent Police Federation.
15:41I think essentially, it does come down to paying conditions, and we need to attract officers into the profession.
15:49We need to keep them in the profession, this is really important, and unfortunately, we're seeing a trend of officers really struggling with the cost of living, as you've already indicated, with ever-increasing workloads and the relentless nature of police work that is really causing some issues here in Kent, and indeed nationally across the whole country.
16:09Are there any other way?
16:11Some officers having to make really tough choices, like things like cutting back on some family expenses and some even relying on food banks?
16:20Yes, indeed. It's very, very concerning. And we are aware, we understand through our benevolent fund, for example, we have officers who are seeking assistance, who are in some very difficult situations.
16:36And for a profession such as this, to have the stress that exists already in a very stressful profession, and then to have to deal with those additional stresses at home, it is really not a good recipe and is very concerning.
16:51The survey also shows that there are other factors in play. It's not purely financial. 59% of Kent officers say that their workload over the last year has been too high or much too high. How does stress show up in your colleagues and their sort of day-to-day work?
17:08Well, I think obviously we see an increase in our survey. In fact, if we look nationally, there's 81% report poor mental health, which is quite a staggering statistic.
17:19I think many of our colleagues actually, to use a phrase, soldier on at work whilst dealing with this. But we do, of course, see inevitably an impact in their well-being and sickness levels, and just generally how they're feeling.
17:33It's very, very hard for them to maintain. And it's only in recent years that we've got much better at talking about mental health than officers coming forward to talk about their mental health, which in a profession traditionally was sort of, well, you don't talk about these things.
17:49So it's good that we're recognising the problem, but we need to do more to deal with it and look after officers and make sure that they're at least enjoying their work and enjoying their home life as well as far as they can.
18:02Claude, Claude, is too much, and therefore amounting to a lot of pressure on police officers. Are they doing their duties to the maximum? Are they able to fulfil their role as a public-facing and public-serving body?
18:17I don't think the public will necessarily see the impact. So there's been a problem now for some considerable time where the amount of work that we've got coming in still continues to far outstrip the number of police officers that we've got.
18:33Policing is all about focusing on what police should be doing. And I do think it's time to have another look at what it is the police shouldn't be doing as well as what they should be doing.
18:43We still have a lot of commitments that are actually not crime-related in the areas of missing people, in the areas of mental health.
18:51We need to really focus on what's important and concentrate on those elements.
18:55And it's an important question that needs to be asked because it's not sustainable to keep trying to struggle with the amount of investigations and workload that are coming in.
19:03Right now, an annual survey which monitors the number of bugs squashed on a number plate has revealed a long-term decline in the number of flying insects.
19:14Well, the bugs play a vital part in our ecosystem by providing services such as pollinating crops and decomposing waste too.
19:23Well, the research is aimed at monitoring flying insect abundance, as Daisy Page has been finding out.
19:30Taking the time to look closer at nature, you may get the chance to see a pollinator feeding on flowers and even crane flies taking flight.
19:39Insects play an important part of our ecosystem, underpinning our food chain which supports birds, mammals and other wildlife.
19:46But research is showing that their population is declining.
19:50Bugs Matter is a National Systems of Science survey of flying insect abundance, led by the Kent Wildlife Trust in partnership with the invertebrate charity Bug Life.
20:00Volunteers take part by cleaning their number plate ahead of a drive, then using the Bug Matter app, they monitor their journey.
20:06Recent data collected showed there were 30% more journeys recorded in 2024 than in 2023.
20:12So when you've finished your journey, you take a photo, a number plate, using the virtual splatometer.
20:27You count the number of bug splats.
20:29One, two, three, four.
20:32Enter that in the app, say whether it rained or not, and that's it.
20:41Submit.
20:43And that submits the post-black count along with the journey route.
20:47But the latest data has revealed that the number of insects sampled on a vehicle's number plate across the UK has fallen by 63% since 2021.
20:56Unfortunately, they are in decline due to all the usual factors that are affecting most biodiversity.
21:02So land cover change, loss of natural habitats, pollution, climate change, you know, all these big drivers of biodiversity loss.
21:13When you consider where, what the terrestrial surface of our planet looked like a few thousand years ago,
21:18we've transformed it from swathes of natural habitat to huge areas of agriculture.
21:24But these small creatures may have a bigger impact than we may think.
21:28Insects and other invertebrates provide a huge number of essential services, I guess you could call them,
21:35which support human life and the life of other animals.
21:40So they do things like they pollinate our crops, they help to break down waste and recycle nutrients.
21:47And insects are food for other animals, lots of birds, lots of fish, lots of mammals feed on insects.
21:55So they provide these services, so these essential parts in the food chains and the functioning of the ecosystems.
22:01But they're also important in their own right.
22:03It is hoped by tracking the bug splats on vehicle number plates,
22:07we will have a better understanding of how their abundance is changing over time.
22:11Daisy Page for KMTV.
22:13Our climate reporter, Daisy Page there now.
22:16Don't forget you can keep up to date with all your latest stories across Kent by logging on to our website.
22:21It's kmtv.co.uk.
22:23There you'll find all our reports, including this one, about a woman's rugby fundraiser with Finn McDermott.
22:28Well, it was a derby day like no other on the Easter weekend.
22:41Rivalries were put aside and new ones formed,
22:43with Aylsford Bulls ladies and Maidstone Rugby Club women's joining forces to take on Swale ladies,
22:48made up of Sheppie, Sittingbourne and Faversham ladies RUFC.
22:52As part of the Mayor of Swale's charity day at the Sheppie Rugby Football Club,
22:56the two sides were playing to fundraise for charities like Lupus UK and Cetada,
23:00all while promoting women's rugby in the county.
23:02Women and girls rugby is becoming really big.
23:05You know, it's building.
23:07Of course, at the moment, we've got England Roses playing in the Six Nations at the moment.
23:12They're playing today as well.
23:14So, yeah, anything like this is brilliant to get women and girls rugby out there.
23:19Just helping our local two teams as well to do the same, build their numbers,
23:24so that, you know, you've got then extra local teams to then play and be involved as well.
23:30The Mayor selected the charities when he was elected
23:32and said he had the idea for the exhibition match at the club's end-of-year dinner.
23:36We came up with the idea of actually, we could put an event on, a Swale trophy.
23:41Initially, we were thinking of having the three sides take part against each other.
23:47And then we actually thought, well, no, hang on.
23:50Fabersham and Sydney Moore are still developing,
23:52so why not have a combined Swale 15 and have a game that way?
23:56And Sheppie have been fantastic in getting all this arranged with the other two clubs,
24:00bringing Maidstone and Aylesford over for the competition.
24:04And hopefully it's going to be a really good day and a really good game
24:06and we can raise lots of money for the two charities.
24:08And one of those charities, Cetada, who give advice and support
24:11to those struggling with domestic abuse,
24:13credit these kind of events with getting their name and their work out there.
24:16It's really important, especially a community event like this,
24:20for people to be aware of what we do.
24:23I think people just don't realise that domestic abuse is really prolific in our communities
24:28and with one in four women being a victim of domestic abuse across their lifetime,
24:33we know that our services are never more needed.
24:35In the end, the home advantage wasn't enough,
24:39and despite leading by more than 20 points for the first half,
24:42Maidstone and Aylesford won by 42 to 35.
24:44One, two, three!
24:45Rugby!
24:48Now, even though Maidstone and Aylesford women's might have clutched the win here,
24:52it's also a wider victory for women's grassroots rugby here in Kent,
24:56with Fabersham and Sittingbourne not often able to play these types of large games
25:00due to limited numbers.
25:01So even though it's been a day of tackling your opponent,
25:04they've also been tackling larger issues at the same time.
25:07Ben McDermid for KMTV in the Isle of Sheppey.
25:12All right, now for a quick look at the weather forecast,
25:14as this week we saw the hottest temperature of the year so far in Kent,
25:18hitting 28 degrees in some parts.
25:20What's it like for the next few days as we head into the weekend?
25:24Can it hold out? Let's take a look.
25:55Well, on a monumental day for local politics here in Kent,
26:11we've seen a political party in charge for three decades nearly,
26:15reduced to just five seats,
26:17and a huge majority of 57 for Reform UK.
26:22The county painted in a slightly different shade of blue.
26:25What exactly happens next?
26:27We're yet to find out,
26:29but we'll have all the latest coverage here on KMTV,
26:32Kent's dedicated television channel.
26:34Well, that's it from us this evening on Kent Tonight.
26:36There's, of course, more news made just for Kent throughout the evening.
26:40Have a wonderful bank holiday weekend.
26:41Bye-bye.
26:42We'll see you next time.
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