The People of Shepway Deserve Better

It has not been good news for Shepway over the past few weeks, three major High Street names announced they were closing stores in Folkestone, Asda has announced it is scaling down and we learnt that Shepway has slipped in the 100 most deprived districts in England as well as the cutting back of the Gurkha Regiment. Further evidence of the current situation is provided in the jobs section of the Folkestone Herald where there are just 11 job adverts this week.


Yet what does the MP for Folkestone & Hythe choose as his subject for his weekly column? The NHS Reforms!

Mr Collins must realise that he is elected to Parliament to represent the people of Folkestone, Hythe & Shepway, not the Conservative Party, and given the need for someone to take a lead in reviving the districts fortunes.

Having said that, Damian Collins did, at least, have the decency to comment on the Deprivation issue. Something those elected to the council and who profess to be the leadership of Shepway District Council have yet to do.

Whilst the Folkestone Herald stoutly defends the status quo by stating that the level of actual deprivation may not have risen and it may be that Shepway has remained static whilst other areas have improved, we still need an explanation as to why those who lead the district have failed to keep pace with change and allowed Shepway to fall behind other areas.

At present, given this economic data, what is there to attract new business to Shepway, why should businesses invest in an area that shows sign of continuous decline over a long period?

It is now time to start improving Shepway for the residents and the businesses in the area. The gloomy facts must be addressed and we must have effective action to reduce the decline in the district, we need to encourage people to live here, businesses to open and to generate growth and prosperity in Shepway. We need real leadership to raise the profile of the area and all the wonderful benefits Shepway can offer, for example easy access to the capital with the high speed links, good connections to the continent, the benefits of being outside the capital with lower costs etc.

This can only be done by a concerted efforts by those we elect to represent Shepway, both at local and national level. We need them to fight for the best for the people and businesses in the area, we need them to lead the people to promote prosperity in the District but most of all we need them to show the people who allow them power that they are working for the best for Shepway.

Can Shepway Tolerate More Incompetent Leadership?

If, in a three year period, a company were to drop 17 places in its standing with its competitors, you could be certain that senior management and the board of directors would be facing pretty tough criticism from its shareholders. You would expect resignations and you expect a pretty swift response to try to halt and reverse that decline.

Could you imagine a school that dropped 17 places in the league tables? There would be outcry at the decline in standards, the Head Teacher would be under pressure to leave and serious questions would be asked of the Governing Body. Again immediate plans would have to go in place to rectify the situation.

Yet when we see the district of Shepway drop 17 places into the top 100 most deprived areas of the country we, the shareholders if you like, get no cohesive response from those running the council or those, elected by us, responsible to making sure the council does its work.

At the very least we should have had an immediate response from the Leader of the Council and the Chief Executive to answer why Shepway has so dramatically fallen behind other districts in terms of deprivation and what the initial plan will be to halt the decline in the area. Then, like in any other situation, the electorate should be given the opportunity to quiz those responsible for the lack of management in the district to ask why this has been allowed to happen.

So far the only response seems to be from a council spokesperson who said the downward slide in the district was ‘disappointing and frustrating’ hardly a suitable response given the situation.

Those elected to represent us, no matter what party, should be baying at the door of the council leader and the cabinet demanding, on behalf of those they are supposed to represent, explanation and determining whether these leaders are actually fit to carry on in their role, having failed so miserably in looking after the interests of Shepway.

Thankfully we have the opportunity to change the councillors who represent us shortly but that does not mean we, the electorate, should not demand answers about the poor performance of the current administration in the district nor should we sit back, as the council seem to be doing, and hope the situation disappears. We need a real strategy for growth in the area and we need effective leadership to replace the incompetent leaders who have led the district into decline.

Shepway Failure Must Be Addressed

Shepway has moved into the top 100 most deprived districts in England. In the Indices of Deprivation it has moved up 17 places from being the 114th most deprived district to the 97th.

Now this move does not necessarily mean that the district is actually more deprived, it could just have slipped behind in improvement behind other areas. Either why, however, it is a failure of those who take responsibility for the district.

Yet the powers that be seem to prefer to choose to ignore the issue.

A look at the website of our local MP, Damian Collins, shows no acknowledgement of the news, nor does the site of the Folkestone & Hythe Conservatives, who have been the party in charge of the district councils in the time the district has climbed higher on the deprivation ladder. There is also a lack of official response from Shepway District Council, who have not issued any press release on the fact that the district has slipped more than any other district in Kent.

Ignoring this vitally important issue will not make it go away, nor will it solve problems that need to be addressed.

First we need those who are leaders in the district, those we elect to look after our interests, to take responsibility for this unacceptable slip in standards in Shepway and to apologise to the electorate for letting it happen. Then we need to have proper information about what has happened and why.

Has the level of poverty in the district really increased or is the climb in the deprivation rating to result of bad management which allowed the area to slip behind others in the country?

Then we need solutions.

We need a publicly available plan to say how this situation is going to be reversed. We need action with that plan, we have already had announcements of big name retailers fleeing Folkestone’s High Street, a less scientific indicator of problems in the area, and we need to know how the council, and others responsible for the district, plan to improve the business environment to encourage the filling of the ever-growing number of empty shops.

We need to know how the powers that be will promote the town to increase growth.

An opportunity, for example, to promote Shepway as a place to stay during the 2012 Olympics has probably already been missed, yet the direct High Speed Link to Stratford would have been an ideal selling point. Making Shepway a gateway town would have raised the general profile of the area but, alas, the distinct lack of enthusiasm to stimulate the district means the opportunity will remain missed.

We all have to accept that financial constraints create limits on what can be done but that is no excuse for falling behind other districts in the country who have the same constraints. There does need to be a concerted effort to bring together all the stakeholders of the district, to coordinate the many excellent regeneration projects in Shepway, to reassure the people of the district that life in Shepway will improve and to ensure that Shepway is a district that can thrive and grow.

But all that takes leadership and, unfortunately the current council has shown that they do not have those leadership skills as they have let the district slip so dramatically over the last few years.

We need to face the issues, we need a solution to reverse the recent decline and we will only achieve that if we have new leadership at Shepway District Council.



On Twitter @TonyButcher