Now Reform's Kent antics are a fire hazard

Reform’s hapless stewardship of its flagship local authority, Kent Council, has been objectively hilarious – but might it now actually be dangerous?

As Rats in a Sack has been documenting, the council’s leader, Linden Kemkaran, has so far thrown nine councillors out of her party, most over an unseemly row about a leaked video, and one for apparently writing a mucky book.

But what Kemkaran – who had no local authority experience whatsoever when she took the helm at Kent Council’s Maidstone HQ – forgot is that many of those councillors also sat on the local fire authority… and that without replacing them, the fire chief now has nobody to sign off on any large expenses which may be incurred tackling blazes in the county.

Of the nine councillors given the heave-ho by Kemkaran, five sat on the fire authority, including its chair (Brian Black), its vice chair (Izzy Kemp, removed last week), Robert Ford, Paul Thomas and Oliver Bradshaw. By removing them, and not nominating any replacements to the local fire authority, Kent’s fire and rescue service chief Anne Millington has tight limits on expenditure without a body to sign off bigger spends.

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Rats in a Sack

Local fire union reps have written to Kemkaran asking for a meeting, but she has so far declined to respond. The Fire Brigades Union, which represents firefighters across the UK, branded the situation “a shambles and a threat to public safety” and dubbed Kemkaran – who Nigel Farage continues to insist he has “100%” faith in – “Captain Chaos”.

Five Reform councillors – including Thomas, Black and Bradshaw – have now been expelled by Kemkaran, while another, Maxine Fothergill, remains suspended by the party following a debacle over a leaked video in which the leader swore and told party members to “suck it up” regarding her decisions. The row follows disquiet over Kemkaran’s plans to hike council tax to the maximum permitted five per cent, having been elected promising swingeing spending cuts would be easy.

Meanwhile another expelled Reform Kent councillor, Robert Ford, has created an Independent Reformers group on the council alongside Bill Barrett after claiming he was booted out following disquiet over an “erotic novel” he penned.

There does seem to be a rather blasé attitude towards fire at Reform’s Kent. Last month it emerged the council was to ask schools to pay £2.2m more for services that are currently subsidised, including statutory compliance testing, which includes asbestos management and fire and electrical safety. Now not only will schools be responsible themselves for coughing up to make sure they don’t burn down, if they do, there might not be anyone available to tackle it.