{"id":423089,"date":"2026-02-13T05:52:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T05:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/423089\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T05:52:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T05:52:10","slug":"warning-over-reckless-reform-budget-at-kent-county-council","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/423089\/","title":{"rendered":"Warning over &#8216;reckless&#8217; Reform budget at Kent County Council"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Kemkaran said Reform would prefer not to propose a council tax increase at all. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But she added that given &#8220;the dire legacy we inherited&#8221;, alongside an unprecedented rise in demands and costs for services, &#8220;this is simply not possible&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The budget papers said the proposals are balanced by \u00a325 million in &#8220;one-off measures&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Hook claimed the budget sells off assets to pay for day-to-day spending.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;You can only sell an asset once,&#8221; he said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Adult social care and health is &#8220;one of the most critical threats to the council&#8217;s financial resilience&#8221;, budget documents show.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">There was an overspend of \u00a349.7m in this area this financial year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kemkaran said Reform would prefer not to propose a council tax increase at all. But she added that&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":423090,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-423089","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=423089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423089\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/423090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}