Medway Council has the best planning score in Kent and wins the Scorecard’s planning award, but it is bottom of the table for complaints and scores in band F for its finances, 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.
Medway Council is Kent’s only unitary authority. It runs every council service for about 280,000 people in Chatham, Gillingham, Rochester, Strood and Rainham, so it is the only council scored on all 12 measures in the October refresh of the Kent Council Scorecard. It scores in band B on three, band C on four, band D on four and band F on one. This is the second 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 Medway Council page.
The scores at a glance
| Measure | Score | Band | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| Refuse collection | 46 | D | joint 10th of 13 |
| Complaints handling | 45 | D | 14th of 14 |
| Freedom of information | 41 | D | 11th of 13 scored |
| Financial health | 21 | F | 13th of 14 |
| Transparency | 77 | B | 4th of 14 |
| Planning | 77 | B | 1st of 13 |
| Housing and homelessness | 50 | D | 8th of 13 |
| Education and children’s services | 68 | C | 2nd of 2 |
| Safeguarding | 65 | C | 2nd of 2 |
| Highways | 55 | C | 1st of 2 |
| Adult social care | 57 | C | 2nd of 2 |
| Manifesto delivery (Trust) | 75 | B | joint 3rd of 14 |
Education, safeguarding, highways and adult social care apply only to Medway and Kent County Council, so the position on those is out of two.
Where it does best
Medway wins the Kent Council Scorecard Award for best planning service, with 77. It decided all 83 of its major planning applications on time in the two years to June 2026, and 96.3% of smaller ones, against England averages of 91.0% and 90.7%. Only 1.1% of its major decisions were overturned at appeal, against 3.2% for England.
On transparency, it scores 77, fourth in Kent. It publishes spending data, an online contracts register, councillors’ allowances and interests, senior salaries with an organisation chart, and live committee papers. It has no open-data portal and no single log of information released under freedom of information.
On highways, it scores 55, one point ahead of Kent County Council. On homelessness prevention, 69.4% of its cases in 2024-25 ended with a home secured for at least six months, against 51.9% for England.
Where it falls short
On complaints, Medway is bottom of the table with 45. The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman upheld 23 of the 25 Medway complaints it investigated in 2025-26, a 92% uphold rate against an 85% average for unitary councils, and up from 63% the year before.
On finances, it scores 21. The council overspent its 2025-26 budget by £9.8m, on a budget balanced only with £28.0m of exceptional financial support from the Government, the second year running. It delivered 28% of its £340m capital programme in the year, and its general reserves of £10.0m sit at the minimum its finance officer has set. Its external auditor, Grant Thornton, rates its financial sustainability and governance as significant weaknesses and issued a disclaimer of opinion on its 2024-25 accounts.
On freedom of information, it answered 76.0% of requests within 20 working days in 2025-26 (1,290 of 1,698), the lowest rate among the councils that supplied figures, and below the 90% the Information Commissioner expects.
On bins, it recycled 37.2% of household waste in 2024-25, below the England average of 42.0%. On housing, 626 households were in temporary accommodation at the end of March 2026, 5.42 per 1,000, with 1,018 children among them.
On highways, 5% of its A roads and 8% of its B and C roads needed maintenance considering in the year to March 2026, against 4% and 6% for England, up from 2% and 6% the year before. The Department for Transport notes that on a small network such as Medway’s, with about 100 km of A road, a change of about a kilometre moves the percentage further.
In adult social care, the Care Quality Commission rated the council as requiring improvement in January 2025, and Medway publishes no regular figure for how long people wait for a care needs assessment.
Promises
The Trust score of 75, joint third in Kent, combines KLN’s tracking of the Labour administration’s election pledges with whether its actions match the issues residents raise. Of six pledges tracked, two are kept, weekly bin collections and a free bulky waste service, one is partly kept and three are still pending, including keeping Medway’s council tax the lowest in Kent.
Who was in charge
Labour, led by Vince Maple, has run Medway since May 2023, with a short spell of no overall control from February to April 2025. Almost all the data falls under that administration. The exceptions are the three-year housing supply figures, which span the previous Conservative administration, and Ofsted’s children’s services inspection of July 2023, two months into Labour’s term.
What the council said
Medway did not respond to the first refresh in July. It was sent its October scores on 2 October and a further notice about its highways score on 17 October. It did not respond to either.
What it means for Medway
As a unitary council, Medway is responsible for every service on the Scorecard, from bins and planning to schools, roads and social care. Local news from the Medway towns is on the Medway 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: Ashford.