Kent’s 14 councils, scored: Kent Local News publishes its first full Council Scorecard

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.

Kent Local News has published the first full set of scores on its Kent Council Scorecard, an independent assessment of how the 14 councils that govern Kent perform on the things residents notice: bin collection, complaints, freedom of information, financial health, transparency and planning.

Every score is drawn from data the councils themselves publish, from the regulators who inspect them, or from Kent Local News’s own information requests. Each cell on the Scorecard links to the source and states the date it was measured. The methodology was published in May, and the scores were sent to all 14 councils for right of reply on 6 July with a deadline of 24 July. No council responded. Their right to reply remains open, and any response received is published word for word alongside the score it concerns.

What the scores show

On refuse and recycling, the county’s best and worst performers are at opposite ends of the same motorway. Tunbridge Wells recycled 51.4% of household waste in 2024-25, the highest rate in Kent and well above the England average of 42.0%, according to DEFRA’s local-authority waste statistics. Dartford recycled 23.7%, the lowest in Kent and little more than half the national figure.

On complaints, the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman upheld 92% of the Medway Council complaints it investigated in 2025-26, against an 85% average for unitary councils. Kent County Council’s figure was 87% against a county-council average of 89%, an improvement on the 2023 finding that 170 children’s-services and education complaints had gone unanswered.

On money, two councils score in the lowest band. Thanet’s external auditor, Grant Thornton, rates all three of its value-for-money criteria as significant weaknesses, and the council’s own 2026-27 budget report projects reserves falling below the £6m it calls the minimum floor for remaining financially functional. Medway’s external auditor issued a disclaimer of opinion on its 2024-25 accounts, and the council’s outturn report shows its budget was balanced only with £28m of exceptional financial support from the Government. According to its 2025-26 outturn report, Kent County Council overspent its revenue budget by £22.7m, drawn from reserves, leaving its general fund reserve at 4.3% of the net budget against its own 5% floor, with a cumulative £130.5m schools deficit held under a statutory override to 2028. Maidstone and Dartford score best.

On transparency, Dover scores highest. Tunbridge Wells publishes spending data that was roughly 18 months out of date when audited, short of the Transparency Code’s quarterly minimum. The Scorecard’s transparency audit found Maidstone to be the only Kent council with no downloadable spending files: payments over £500 sit behind a search-only database.

On planning, MHCLG’s statistics show Canterbury decided 84.8% of major applications on time over the two years to March 2026, against an England average of 91.0%, and 75.8% of non-major applications against 90.8%. Every other Kent authority met the national thresholds.

On freedom of information, only Kent County Council and Folkestone & Hythe publish usable performance statistics. Kent County Council answered 86% of 2,858 requests within the statutory 20 working days in 2025 and has attracted 23 Information Commissioner decision notices in three years, more than any other council in Kent. The other 12 councils publish no figures, so their cells say so. Kent Local News has sent the same statutory request to all 14 councils and will score every one of them in October.

Who was in charge when

Council performance data lags, and in several Kent councils control changed hands while the data was being collected. Every scored cell therefore names the administration in office during the period measured. Kent County Council’s 2025-26 budget, for example, was set by the outgoing Conservative administration in February 2025; most of the year’s delivery fell to Reform UK, which took control on 22 May 2025. Attribution records who held office. Readers can judge credit and blame for themselves.

How to read it

Scores run from 0 to 100 and are banded A to F. Where a council does not publish the data a component needs, that component is excluded and the rest re-weighted, never guessed, and the cell’s note says exactly what is missing. Metrics are never combined into a single ranking, because bins, planning and finance are different services measured with different data. The hub instead carries a comparison table for each metric, so readers can see who is best and worst at one thing at a time.

Alongside the data metrics, each council page carries a manifesto tracker, scoring the controlling party’s election pledges as kept, partial, broken or pending, and a panel of the top public issues in that area with an assessment of whether the council’s actions, not its statements, align with residents.

What comes next

The Scorecard is refreshed quarterly. The October refresh will add freedom of information scores for all 14 councils from Kent Local News’s own request, and three new metrics: housing and homelessness for the districts and Medway, and highways and adult social care for Kent County Council and Medway. It will also carry the first Kent Council Scorecard Awards, one for each metric, decided on the published scores after the councils’ right of reply has closed.

Corrections and additions are welcome from councils and readers alike, at editor@kentlocalnews.co.uk. Every change to a published score is logged in the methodology’s public edit history.