Mike Sole Reporting Back: January 2026

As we start 2026 there is a lot of focus on Local Government Reorganisation. In the spring we will find out the boundaries of the new unitary councils, and elections to these councils will take place next year.  Unitary councils will have a shadow role for one year until both KCC and CCC are dissolved in 2028. With that in mind the City Council will be carrying a Community Governance Review of the un-parished areas of the district. This might see un-parished areas like Wincheap becoming part of a Canterbury Town Council, have its own parish council or no change. Look out for the consultation later this year.

This month I attended parish council meetings in Kingston, Womenswold and Ickham. I also attended a meeting with Ickham Parish Council and KCC to discuss the proposals for a bus shelter in Bramling.

There are a lot of potholes around – please do report any that you notice to KCC. I walked around Wickhambreaux to report several that had not yet been dealt with.

It was good to see the street lights in Western Avenue, Bridge working again after being out of commission for more than a year.

I have asked KCC to look again at the persistent road flooding issue between Barham and Breach and this is under investigation.

I attended a meeting of the A257 Group and they continue to push for safety improvements and lower speeds on the road.

The KCC budget has now been published and will be debated next month. The headline is that despite a backlog of road repairs, huge pressures on social services and a recruitment freeze, the Reform administration have decided to restrict council tax increases to 3.99% rather than the maximum allowed of 4.99%. Had they increased by the maximum it would have added £10.1m to the budget and cost a band D council tax payer an extra 32p a week. Time will tell if this small saving for households was worth the headline it created, when this could instead have increased KCC’s spend on highways by about 20% and many of the potholes and drainage issues could be addressed.

Other issues that I have dealt with included, request for yellow marking refresh outside Petham school, problems with bin collections, new litter bin requests, persistent blocked drains and parking restrictions.

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