Four New Councils to Replace Kent and Medway’s 14 Local Authorities by 2028

Every household in Kent and Medway will be getting a brand-new council from April 2028 — the biggest shake-up of local government in the county for half a century. The Secretary of State has scrapped the current patchwork of 14 separate councils and will replace them with four large unitary authorities, each responsible for everything from bin collections and libraries to schools, social care and highways.

The four new councils will be drawn along these lines:

• North: Dartford, Gravesham and Medway
• West: Sevenoaks, Tonbridge and Malling, Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells
• Middle: Swale, Ashford and Folkestone and Hythe
• East: Canterbury, Thanet and Dover

Nothing changes immediately. Council leaders across Kent and Medway issued a joint statement on 16 July 2026 stressing that residents will still be “dealing with the same council staff tomorrow and the day after that.” Same offices. Same phone numbers. Same faces — for now.

A unitary council — the model Medway already runs on — means one authority handles all local services in its area rather than splitting responsibilities between county and district levels. At the moment, residents across Kent are served by a combination of district or borough councils and Kent County Council, each handling different services. From 2028, one council does the lot in each area. Simpler in theory, at least.

The decision follows a government consultation that attracted around 3,000 responses. Leaders acknowledge there is “a lot of work to do” and say their immediate priority is supporting the thousands of council staff affected while keeping day-to-day services running. They describe the coming months as the start of bringing different teams together to design what they call “the best possible services” for residents.

But the scale of the task is considerable. Fourteen existing councils — one county, one unitary and twelve districts, boroughs and city councils — must be wound down and folded into four entirely new organisations, all before the April 2028 deadline.

The new councils take effect on 1 April 2028.