Reform-run Kent council has been accused of trying to block scrutiny after it refused, for more than five months, to produce evidence that it had saved more than £40m by cancelling two environmental projects that did not exist yet.
Polly Billington, a Labour MP in Kent, first requested background to the claim via a freedom of information (FoI) request in July. She said the subsequent delay had not been explained and seemed to show the council was embarrassed at what the documents would show.
Kent county council said it rejected any suggestion of a cover-up, and that it planned to release the information to Billington, the East Thanet MP, later this week.
The saga began when the Kent leader, Linden Kemkaran, told a council meeting on 10 July that the authority had saved £32m by scrapping a programme to make properties more environmentally friendly, and £7.5m by not making the council’s fleet of vehicles electric by 2030.
This prompted the FoI request from Billington, who worked in green energy before becoming an MP, which requested documents setting out how the total figure had been calculated.
A response from the council in August said the only available information was two lines in a budget document, arguing that because they were only potential projects and had not been formally agreed, no business cases had been completed.
Billington told the council it was “not plausible” that no other documents or emails about the projects existed, and demanded they be passed to her.
Since then, the MP has written several more times to the council and then to Kemkaran, saying they had breached laws over FoI requests and that she would take the case to the information commissioner’s office.
In an email at the end of October, one of the council’s FoI officers apologised for the delay, saying they were “currently waiting for a response from the leader’s office”.
Billington said she was shocked at what she called a lack of openness from the council about supposed savings on projects that “never really existed”.
She said: “When I submitted this transparency request all I wanted was a bit of honesty from Reform UK that the supposed savings from these energy efficiency projects wasn’t all that was claimed. What I wasn’t prepared for was the sheer lengths council leader Kemkaran would apparently go to in order to prevent the truth being released.”
The council has faced a sometimes turbulent period since Reform took over in May, with their post-election total of 57 councillors now down to 48 after suspensions, expulsions and other departures.
In October, five Reform councillors were suspended by the party with two of them subsequently expelled after the Guardian published a leaked video that showed councillors complaining about “backbiting” and being told by Kemkaran to “fucking suck it up” if they did not agree with her decisions.
A Kent spokesperson said the council took its responsibilities under FoI laws seriously, and that the claimed £40m-plus savings “relate to forward-looking assumptions within the capital programme rather than approved or committed schemes”.
They said the cancelled projects were “indicative” and thus did not have detailed business cases. Both were, it added, “part of the council’s medium-term capital planning and would have created significant financial pressure had they moved forward”.
The statement added: “Kent county council rejects any suggestion of obstruction, impropriety or a cover-up. The council has already confirmed to Ms Billington’s office that a further substantive response will be provided by Friday of this week, and that position remains unchanged.”
