Canterbury City Council is second in Kent on housing and homelessness, but bottom of the table for planning and in band D for freedom of information, on the Kent Council Scorecard’s October 2026 refresh.
Declaration: Kent Local News is edited by Daniel Dabin, who is also the leader of the GB Freedom party. The Scorecard is scored from published data under a published methodology, every council receives its scores for right of reply before publication, and every score links to its source so that readers can check it.
Canterbury City Council, which serves about 165,000 people in Canterbury, Whitstable, Herne Bay and the surrounding villages, is scored on eight measures in the October refresh of the Kent Council Scorecard. It scores in band B on one, band C on four and band D on three. This is the fourth of 14 pieces, one for each Kent council.
Scores run from 0 to 100 and are banded A to F. They are never added together, because each measures a different service with different data. The full evidence for every score is on the Canterbury City Council page.
The scores at a glance
| Measure | Score | Band | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| Refuse collection | 60 | C | joint 5th of 13 |
| Complaints handling | 57 | C | 6th of 14 |
| Freedom of information | 51 | D | 10th of 13 scored |
| Financial health | 62 | C | joint 6th of 14 |
| Transparency | 74 | B | joint 7th of 14 |
| Planning | 43 | D | 13th of 13 |
| Housing and homelessness | 63 | C | 2nd of 13 |
| Manifesto delivery (Trust) | 50 | D | joint 9th of 14 |
Education, safeguarding, highways and adult social care are run by Kent County Council, so they do not apply to Canterbury.
Where it does best
On housing and homelessness, Canterbury scores 63, second in Kent behind Tunbridge Wells. It completed 996 affordable homes in the three years to March 2025, 29.8% of the homes the Housing Delivery Test required, against a Kent median of 17.2%. It had 161 households in temporary accommodation at the end of March 2026, 2.38 per 1,000, below the rate of 2.83 for England outside London. The council published no usable figure for homelessness prevention in 2024-25, so that part of the score is left out and the rest re-weighted.
On finances, it scores 62. It came within £16,000 of its £13.6m net budget in 2025-26, the second year running within about £20,000, and its auditor found no significant weaknesses.
On bins, it recycled 43.0% of household waste in 2024-25, above the England average of 42.0%. On transparency, it publishes monthly spending data with five years of archive, its contracts over £75,000, councillors’ allowances and senior salaries.
Where it falls short
On planning, Canterbury is bottom of the table with 43. It decided 82.6% of major applications and 78.4% of smaller ones on time in the two years to June 2026, against England averages of 91.0% and 90.7%. It issued nine formal enforcement notices in the year to June 2026, 1.02 per 100 decisions against 1.89 for England.
On freedom of information, it scores 51. It answered 78.5% of requests within 20 working days in 2025-26, down from 84% the year before and below the 90% the Information Commissioner expects in all three years. The council gave a percentage but no counts. The Commissioner issued no decision notices against it in three years.
On finances, 52% of its general fund capital programme slipped in 2025-26, and its general fund reserve of £3.1m is just above the £3.0m minimum the council recommends. On transparency, there is no log of information released under freedom of information and no open-data portal.
Promises
The Trust score of 50 combines KLN’s tracking of the administration’s pledges with whether its actions match the issues residents raise. Of seven pledges tracked, two are partly kept, a clean air strategy and a climate change commission, and five are still pending, including building more council homes and campaigning for an acute hospital in Canterbury.
Who was in charge
A Labour and Liberal Democrat coalition led by Alan Baldock ran the council from May 2023 until May 2026. Labour has run the council as a minority since. Almost all the data covers the coalition years. The three-year housing supply figures also span the previous Conservative administration, and the July 2026 transparency audit took place under the Labour minority.
What the council said
Canterbury did not respond to the first refresh in July. It was sent its October scores on 2 October, and on 20 October it replied that there were “no challenges or corrections”.
What it means for Canterbury, Whitstable and Herne Bay
Canterbury City Council collects the bins, decides planning applications and handles housing and homelessness across the district. Kent County Council runs schools, social care and roads. Local news is on the Canterbury, Whitstable and Herne Bay news pages, and the Scorecard hub has a comparison table for each measure.
The right of reply stays open. Any response from the council will be published word for word beside the score it concerns. Corrections are welcome at editor@kentlocalnews.co.uk.
On Monday: Dartford.