The Conservative View
Welcome to the first of a regular update on Medway Council Cycle of Committees. Three things from this cycle deserve a sharper look.
The first, inevitably, is the £46m HRA acquisition. The Cabinet on 7 April approved the transfer-in of a portfolio of properties and recommended a £45.95m capital borrowing to Full Council. By the time it reached the chamber on 23 April, six Members had already called the decision in, and Council was therefore asked to approve the addition to the Capital Programme subject to the outcome of that call-in. I moved the Conservative amendment. My concerns — incomplete due diligence, optimistic assumptions on PWLB rates, an inflation-blind maintenance budget, and a sign-off concentrated in the hands of just three people — are set out in full in The £46m Gamble and I will not repeat them here.
The second is the gap between what the Cabinet says and what the budget actually shows. On 7 April the Cabinet approved its third annual refresh of the *One Medway Financial Improvement and Transformation Plan*, the document required by the Secretary of State as a condition of the “exceptional financial support” arrangement. On 12 March, Health and Adult Social Care scrutiny was being told that Adult Social Care alone is running a £12m pressure — a worsening of £3.7m on the previous round — and that the Council had been forced to request a further £9.9m of Exceptional Financial Support from Government, on top of the £18.184m already in the 2025/26 budget. Two of the largest contracts in the cycle — the Gun Wharf refit at £14.995m and the new five-year Medway Norse arrangement covering waste, SEND transport and HWRCs — were also nodded through. Whatever the Cabinet may put in its glossy plan, the underlying numbers do not show a council on a credible path to financial sustainability; they show a council borrowing to stay still.
The third is the Cabinet’s quiet U-turn on Grounds Maintenance. In January the Cabinet awarded the contract to Canvins Group. By 10 March it had rescinded that decision and brought the service back in-house, and — usefully for the administration — declared the matter urgent so that it could not be called in. Decisions of that scale should not be made and unmade in two months, and they should not be insulated from scrutiny when they are. Residents are entitled to know how the original procurement got it so wrong and what the cost of reversing it has been.
A final note on the wider tone of the cycle. There were two reminders in this period of the value of in-chamber accountability. At Full Council, Cllr Mrs Turpin pressed Cllr Vince Maple on the Portfolio Holder Cllr Paterson’s recorded view that “elected Members should keep well out” of road-prioritisation decisions — a remarkable proposition from an administration that asks for residents’ votes on the basis that those Members will represent them. And Health and Adult Social Care scrutiny was right to defer the proposed Kent Community Health / Medway Community Healthcare integration to the next meeting until both Trust Chairs are present. These are the moments where committee work earns its keep.
Cabinet
The Cabinet, chaired by the Leader Cllr Vince Maple, met twice in the cycle — on 10 March and 7 April — and took between them more than thirty numbered decisions, some of which now move on to Full Council for final approval.
Cabinet, 10 March 2026.
The Cabinet adopted the refreshed Adult Social Care Strategy 2025 – 2028 (decision 43/2026), following its earlier consideration by the Health and Adult Social Care Overview and Scrutiny Committee on 15 January.
It approved Medway’s £4.59m allocation under the new Crisis and Resilience Fund — the three-year national scheme that replaces the Household Support Fund and Discretionary Housing Payments from 1 April 2026 — and the two new local policies that sit underneath it (decisions 44 to 47/2026).
It adopted the selection criteria and initial list for the new Medway Local Heritage Asset List (decisions 48 and 49/2026) and authorised the transfer of more than £1m of pooled Section 106 contributions to Hoo St Werburgh & Chattenden Parish Council to deliver a replacement village hall (decision 50/2026).
It put the updated Medway Developer Contributions and Obligations Guide out for consultation (decision 51/2026), agreed to consult on a new Articles on the Highway Policy regulating A-boards and shopfront displays (decisions 52 and 53/2026), commenced the procurement of on-street EV charging infrastructure under a £2.14m LEVI grant (decision 54/2026), approved the installation of 26 new real-time bus information screens — six at Chatham Bus Station and twenty across Medway (decisions 55 and 56/2026), and awarded a five-year HRA estate-services and HFIL communal-cleaning contract to Medway Norse (decision 57/2026).
The Cabinet also rescinded its earlier January decision to award the Grounds Maintenance contract to Canvins Group, returning the service to in-house delivery from 1 April 2026 and exempting the urgency provision from call-in (decisions 58 and 59/2026).
Cabinet, 7 April 2026.
The Cabinet noted a Children’s Services update reporting positive Ofsted feedback and Medway’s selection for a national kinship-care pilot (no decision number).
It then approved the principal item of the cycle: the proposed acquisition by the Council’s Housing Revenue Account of 791 social housing properties from a Registered Provider, recommending a £45.95m capital borrowing requirement to Full Council (decisions 60 to 63/2026).
The Cabinet approved the third year of the One Medway Financial Improvement and Transformation Plan, the document required as a condition of the Government’s “exceptional financial support” (decisions 64 and 65/2026), and recommended a revised Petitions Scheme to Full Council (decision 66/2026).
It re-engaged Medway Norse Limited under a new five-year contract (with a two-year extension option) covering waste, greenspace, household waste recycling centres and SEND transport from 1 April 2026, addressing a CIPFA concern that those services had been operating without a current contract since March 2023 (decisions 67 and 68/2026).
The Cabinet authorised the procurement of an LED lighting upgrade to the Medway Tunnel, expected to deliver around £200,000 of annual energy savings (decision 69/2026); awarded the £14,995,041 contract for the refurbishment of Gun Wharf — originally triggered by the discovery of RAAC in 2023 and now extended to a full refit including a new chamber capable of seating up to 100 Members — to Apex Contractors Ltd (decision 70/2026); and awarded the new Intermediate Care and Reablement Service contract to HCRG (formerly Virgin Care) on a five-year term from 1 October 2026 (decision 71/2026).
Full Council, 23 April 2026
Full Council met under the Mayor’s chairmanship with seven Members sending apologies. After approving the record of the budget meeting on 25 February, it received a public question from Mr Alan Wells of Chatham, on behalf of the Medway United Nations Association, asking whether the Council would press the Kent Pension Fund to divest from companies in the international arms trade. The Leader, Cllr Vince Maple, responded that the Pension Fund is a Kent-wide structure with its own ethical investment sub-group on which Medway is represented by Cllr Mark Jones, and that the matter would be considered there in due course.
The Conservative Group brought a motion (Motion A) proposed by Cllr George Perfect and supported by Cllr Mark Joy, expressing concern at the financial pressures within Adult Social Care — most recently reported at around £12m at Round 3 — and at instability in NHS leadership locally, and resolving that the Council write to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. An amendment was moved by Cllr Mrs Elizabeth Turpin (Independent Group), supported by Cllr Michael Pearce.
The headline decision item — moved to the end of the agenda so that exempt commercial information could be considered — was the £45,950,000 capital addition recommended by Cabinet on 7 April for the acquisition of the 791-property Registered Provider portfolio (item 878). The Cabinet decision had been called in by six Members of the Council under the Constitution’s call-in provisions, so any addition to the Capital Programme is subject to the outcome of that call-in process. I moved the Conservative amendment, which I have written about separately in The £46m Gamble.
In other business the Council approved the appointment of Mrs Rebecca Bayoji as a second Independent Person under section 28(7) of the Localism Act 2011, agreed changes to two polling districts in Watling and to polling places in Rochester West and Borstal and Fort Pitt wards in preparation for the May 2027 elections (in their current Medway form), and recommended the establishment of committees, the schedule of meetings for 2026/27 and the appointments to outside bodies forward to the Annual Meeting of Council on 13 May. The first Annual Overview and Scrutiny Report under the revised Council Rules was received and noted, and the revised Petitions Scheme was carried forward without further debate to the next ordinary meeting under Council Rule 16.2.
Planning Committee
Planning met on 11 March and 8 April 2026.
On 11 March, the Committee approved the hybrid mixed-use scheme at the Old Gas Works, Strand Approach Road, Gillingham (MC/25/1033, Gillingham North) — full permission for the replacement gas distribution depot and a Class E retail unit, plus outline permission for up to 500 dwellings, a care home, commercial space and a new sailing clubhouse. It refused MC/25/1506, Shaftesbury House, Upnor (Strood Rural), an application to convert a single dwelling into an 11-bedroom HMO, on sustainability grounds — paragraph 8 of the NPPF. It approved a single end-of-terrace dwelling adjacent to 50 Lime Court, Wigmore (MC/25/2292), in our own Hempstead and Wigmore ward. The substantial High Halstow application (MC/23/0855), for up to 760 homes plus a primary school, was also debated.
On 8 April, the Committee considered two appeals against non-determination on the Hoo Peninsula — MC/23/1934 at Ratcliffe Highway (240 dwellings) and MC/24/2022 west of Hoo St Werburgh (450 dwellings) — and approved a change of use to a care home at 54 Woodlands Road, Gillingham (MC/26/0094, Watling).
Health and Adult Social Care Overview and Scrutiny Committee, 12 March 2026
The Committee, chaired by Cllr Dan McDonald, took an update on the proposed group structure between Medway NHS Foundation Trust and Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust — including the decision to revert from a single Chief Executive across both Trusts to two separate CEOs — and an update on the transfer of Children and Young People’s Mental Health Services and All Age Eating Disorder Services to Kent and Medway Mental Health NHS Trust from 1 April 2026. It deferred the proposed integration of Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust and Medway Community Healthcare to the next meeting, requesting attendance from both Trust Chairs.
It received the Adult Social Care CQC improvement update, the Early Help and Carers report, and the One Medway Council Plan Q3 performance report. The Round 3 Revenue Budget Monitoring report disclosed an Adult Social Care pressure of £12.042m, a worsening of £3.687m on Round 2, and noted that officers had submitted an Exceptional Financial Support request to Government for a further £9.9m in respect of 2025/26, on top of the £18.184m already in the budget.
Children and Young People Overview and Scrutiny Committee, 5 March 2026
The Committee, chaired by Cllr Joanne Howcroft-Scott, held the annual sessions with the Portfolio Holder for Children’s Services (Cllr Adam Price) and the Portfolio Holder for Education (Cllr Tracy Coombs), covering Ofsted feedback, the Mockingbird and Kinship programmes, SEND reform, Elective Home Education and the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. It noted that North Kent Mind had been awarded the contract for the Medway Therapeutic Alliance for child and young-adult mental health support. The Round 3 Revenue Budget Monitoring report showed a forecast £434k overspend in Education and a £2.75m overspend in Children’s Services — an increase of £343k since Round 2.
Looking ahead
The next cycle closes on 16 June 2026. It includes the Annual Council on 13 May (mostly ceremonial — Mayor election and committee appointments), Planning on 6 May and Cabinet on 5 May (already taken place), Cabinet on 2 June, Planning on 3 June, Children & Young People on 10 June and Health and Adult Social Care on 16 June. I will publish the next Cycle Watch shortly after.
Source documents
The papers and minutes for every meeting referenced above can be found at democracy.medway.gov.uk:
- Cabinet, 10 March 2026 — agenda and minutes
- Cabinet, 7 April 2026 — agenda and minutes
- Full Council, 23 April 2026 — agenda and draft minutes
- Health and Adult Social Care O&S, 12 March 2026 — agenda and draft minutes
- Children and Young People O&S, 5 March 2026 — agenda and draft minutes
- Planning Committee, 11 March 2026 — agenda and minutes
- Planning Committee, 8 April 2026 — agenda and minutes
