\n<\/p>\n
Your report on the problems in Kent county council stresses the conflicts in the ruling Reform UK party over the budget (\u2018Suck it up\u2019: leaked video exposes bitter infighting at Reform UK\u2019s flagship Kent council, 18\u00a0October). These squabbles must not obscure the very real problems that the county faces in meeting government requirements to restructure into three or four new unitary councils.<\/p>\n
The new pattern of unitaries is likely to divide wealthy West Kent from East Kent, which has the highest concentration of social need and the least capacity to raise council tax. The level of debt that unitaries will inherit from the existing district councils makes things much worse \u2013 virtually zero in West Kent and probably near \u00a3500m in East Kent. Kent county council\u2019s additional \u00a3750m debt makes matters worse<\/p>\n
The issues of social need, the capacity to invest in good-quality jobs and how to address the debt crisis must be at the forefront of debate about how we go forward.\u00a0Otherwise the future for\u00a0East Kent will be bleak. Have an opinion on anything you\u2019ve read in the Guardian today? Please <\/em><\/strong>email<\/em><\/strong> us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our <\/em><\/strong>letters<\/em><\/strong> section.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Your report on the problems in Kent county council stresses the conflicts in the ruling Reform UK party over the budget (\u2018Suck it up\u2019: leaked video exposes bitter infighting at Reform UK\u2019s flagship Kent council, 18\u00a0October). These squabbles must not obscure the very real problems that the county faces in meeting government requirements to restructure<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30117,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[5821,914,558,920,2755,302],"class_list":{"0":"post-30116","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-challenges","9":"tag-council","10":"tag-government","11":"tag-kent","12":"tag-local","13":"tag-restructure"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30116\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/30117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Prof Peter Taylor-Gooby<\/strong>
Lead, East Kent Poverty Study<\/em><\/p>\n