Dartford Borough Council has the second-soundest finances in Kent, but it is bottom of the table for bins and in band D for housing, 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.
Dartford Borough Council, which serves about 116,000 people, is scored on eight measures in the October refresh of the Kent Council Scorecard. It scores in band B on three, band C on one, band D on three and band F on one. This is the fifth 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 Dartford Borough Council page.
The scores at a glance
| Measure | Score | Band | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| Refuse collection | 27 | F | 13th of 13 |
| Complaints handling | 52 | D | joint 9th of 14 |
| Freedom of information | 70 | B | 7th of 13 scored |
| Financial health | 71 | B | 2nd of 14 |
| Transparency | 71 | B | 13th of 14 |
| Planning | 66 | C | 6th of 13 |
| Housing and homelessness | 41 | D | 12th 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 Dartford.
Where it does best
On finances, Dartford scores 71, second in Kent behind Maidstone. Its reserves are large: £78.3m of earmarked revenue reserves at the end of March 2026, about 3.8 times its £20.4m net service budget, plus a £3.5m general fund balance. Its auditor found no significant weaknesses, and it froze council tax for 2026-27. Its Band D charge of £188.64 is the lowest of Kent’s 12 districts.
On freedom of information, it scores 70. It answered 92.5% of requests within 20 working days in 2025-26 (527 of 570), above the 90% the Information Commissioner expects, though down from 94.8% the year before.
On planning, it decided all 45 of its major applications on time in the two years to June 2026, and 92.2% of smaller ones.
Where it falls short
On bins, Dartford is bottom of the table with 27, the only band F score for bins in Kent. It recycled 23.7% of household waste in 2024-25, the lowest rate in Kent and little more than half the England average of 42.0%, and produced the most residual waste per household in Kent, 603.5kg against 513.3kg for England.
On housing, it scores 41. It had 494 households in temporary accommodation at the end of March 2026, 10.05 per 1,000 households against 2.83 for England outside London, with 687 children among them. Its overspend on temporary accommodation and homelessness in 2025-26 was £931,000. On prevention, 40.8% of cases in 2024-25 ended with a home secured for at least six months, against 51.9% for England.
On complaints, the Ombudsman upheld all three Dartford complaints it investigated in 2025-26, 2.4 per 100,000 residents, the highest district rate in Kent that year. The numbers are small, so the score rests on process measures as well as the uphold count.
On finances, the council is scored down on forecasting and delivery: its 2025-26 outturn came in £1.87m under the service budget, or 9.2%, and it delivered 53% of its capital programme, down from 70% the year before.
On transparency, it scores 71, 13th of 14. Its spending files were hard to find on the audit date, its contracts register was two quarters behind when re-checked, and nothing had been added to its freedom of information disclosure log since 24 March 2026.
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 three pledges tracked, one is partly kept, engaging with National Highways on mitigation for the Lower Thames Crossing, and two are still pending, on regeneration and on keeping council tax low.
Who was in charge
The Conservatives, led by Jeremy Kite, have run Dartford since 2007, and he has led the council since 2006. Every score covers a period under that administration.
What the council said
Dartford did not respond to the first refresh in July. It was sent its October scores on 2 October and did not respond.
Kent Local News’s own audit was wrong about Dartford’s transparency. In September the Scorecard said no councillor allowances page could be found and that the council had no open data beyond a national listing, and the audit had recorded its contracts register as unverified and its disclosure log as not found. All four were online before the audit date and KLN missed them. The score was corrected from 49 to 71 on 1 October.
What it means for Dartford
Dartford Borough Council collects the bins, decides planning applications and handles housing and homelessness in the borough. Kent County Council runs schools, social care and roads. Local news is on the Dartford news page, 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.
Tomorrow: Dover.