Maidstone Borough Council wins two Kent Council Scorecard awards, for the soundest finances and the most improved score, and scores in band B on five measures, but its complaints record is among the weakest in Kent.
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.
Maidstone Borough Council, which collects the bins, decides planning applications and handles housing for about 174,000 people in Maidstone and the surrounding villages, is scored on eight measures in the October refresh of the Kent Council Scorecard. It scores in band B on five, band C on two and band D on one. This is the ninth 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 Maidstone Borough Council page.
The scores at a glance
| Measure | Score | Band | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| Refuse collection | 60 | C | joint 5th of 13 |
| Complaints handling | 47 | D | 13th of 14 |
| Freedom of information | 79 | B | 5th of 13 scored |
| Financial health | 76 | B | 1st of 14 |
| Transparency | 74 | B | joint 7th of 14 |
| Planning | 73 | B | 2nd of 13 |
| Housing and homelessness | 61 | C | 3rd of 13 |
| Manifesto delivery (Trust) | 84 | B | joint 1st of 14 |
Education, safeguarding, highways and adult social care are run by Kent County Council, so they do not apply to the borough.
The awards
Soundest finances. Maidstone scores 76, the highest in Kent. Its draft 2025-26 accounts show the council £709,000 under budget, with the best capital-programme delivery in Kent and usable reserves of about twice its net revenue budget. Its external auditor found no significant weaknesses. The weak point is council tax: its Band D of £310.68 is the second-highest of the 12 Kent districts.
Most improved. Maidstone’s planning score rose from 68 to 73, from band C to band B, the largest rise in Kent since the first refresh. Maidstone decided 95.5% of major applications on time, up from 93.5%, and the share of its major decisions overturned at appeal fell from 4.2% to 3.1%. It decided 97.4% of smaller applications on time, and its use of enforcement notices, 2.46 per 100 decisions, is above the England rate of 1.89.
Where else it does well
On freedom of information, it answered 92% of requests within 20 working days in 2025-26, above the 90% the Information Commissioner expects and up from 71% the year before. The council gave a percentage, not the number of requests answered in time.
On housing, it scores 61, third in Kent. In 2024-25, 70.3% of its homelessness prevention cases ended with a home secured for at least six months, against 51.9% for England, and affordable homes made up 20.9% of the homes the Housing Delivery Test required, above the Kent median of 17.2%. At the end of March 2026, 260 households were in temporary accommodation, with 384 children among them.
The Trust score of 84 is the joint highest in Kent, level with Folkestone & Hythe. It combines KLN’s tracking of the coalition’s election pledges with whether its actions match the issues residents raise. Of seven pledges tracked, two are kept: the council adopted a Rights of Nature framework in May 2026, and night-time car park season tickets for residents were cut to £90 a year. The other five are still pending.
Where it falls short
On complaints, Maidstone scores 47, 13th of 14. The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman upheld all four of its investigations into the council in 2025-26, 2.1 upheld per 100,000 residents against a district average of 1.0, and seven of nine in 2024-25. It is the only Kent district materially above the district average on the volume of upheld complaints in both years.
Who was in charge
A coalition of the Liberal Democrats and the Green & Independent Alliance, led by Stuart Jeffery, has run the council since 18 May 2024, after a Conservative-led minority administration. Some of the housing and recycling figures span both. Each score on the council’s page names the administration in office during the period it measures.
What the council said
The council did not respond to the first refresh in July. It was sent its October scores on 2 October and did not respond before the deadline of 23 October.
What it means for Maidstone
Residents can follow council news on the Maidstone page. The Scorecard hub has a comparison table for each measure. On Monday: Sevenoaks District Council.
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.