\n<\/p>\n
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 \u00a340m by cancelling two environmental projects that did not exist yet.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The saga began when the Kent leader, Linden Kemkaran, told a council meeting on 10 July that the authority had saved \u00a332m by scrapping a programme to make properties more environmentally friendly, and \u00a37.5m by not making the council\u2019s fleet of vehicles electric by 2030.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Billington told the council it was \u201cnot plausible\u201d that no other documents or emails about the projects existed, and demanded they be passed to her.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s office.<\/p>\n
In an email at the end of October, one of the council\u2019s FoI officers apologised for the delay, saying they were \u201ccurrently waiting for a response from the leader\u2019s office\u201d.<\/p>\n
Billington said she was shocked at what she called a lack of openness from the council about supposed savings on projects that \u201cnever really existed\u201d.<\/p>\n
She said: \u201cWhen 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\u2019t all that was claimed. What I wasn\u2019t prepared for was the sheer lengths council leader Kemkaran would apparently go to in order to prevent the truth being released.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cbackbiting\u201d and being told by Kemkaran to \u201cfucking suck it up\u201d if they did not agree with her decisions.<\/p>\n
A Kent spokesperson said the council took its responsibilities under FoI laws seriously, and that the claimed \u00a340m-plus savings \u201crelate to forward-looking assumptions within the capital programme rather than approved or committed schemes\u201d.<\/p>\n
They said the cancelled projects were \u201cindicative\u201d and thus did not have detailed business cases. Both were, it added, \u201cpart of the council\u2019s medium-term capital planning and would have created significant financial pressure had they moved forward\u201d.<\/p>\n
The statement added: \u201cKent county council rejects any suggestion of obstruction, impropriety or a cover-up. The council has already confirmed to Ms Billington\u2019s office that a further substantive response will be provided by Friday of this week, and that position remains unchanged.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 \u00a340m 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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38217,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[15385,2124,9015,3287,914,920,838,20977,1735,3062],"class_list":{"0":"post-38216","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-40m","9":"tag-accused","10":"tag-blocking","11":"tag-claim","12":"tag-council","13":"tag-kent","14":"tag-reform","15":"tag-reformrun","16":"tag-saved","17":"tag-scrutiny"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38216","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=38216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}