Councillor Marc Logen

15/07/2026

🚧 Horton Road gas main works: confirmed diversion routes
Following my post on 8th July, WCB Utilities are replacing the gas main along Horton Road in phases from 25 July to 6 November. KCC Highways have now confirmed the signed car diversion routes for each phase. These are the confirmed details.

📅 Phase 1: 25 July to 10 September
Horton Road closed from Station Road to Jacobs Lane. Skinney Lane closed from East Hill to Jacobs Lane.
Horton Road diversion: Station Road, A225 Dartford Road, A20 London Road, Eglantine Lane, Lombard Street, The Street (Bull Hill), and vice versa.
Skinney Lane diversion: East Hill, Horton Road, A225 Dartford Road, A20 London Road, Eglantine Lane, Lombard Street, Forge Lane, and vice versa.
Note: School Lane is not due to finish until 28 July. Horton Road will not close until School Lane reopens, so the two will not be shut at the same time.

📅 Phase 2: 16 September to 19 October
Horton Road closed from Jacobs Lane to The Street (Bull Hill).
Diversion: Jacobs Lane, Forge Lane, The Street (Bull Hill), and vice versa.

📅 Phase 3: 19 October to 6 November
The Street (Bull Hill) junction with Horton Road closed.
Diversion: Horton Road, Jacobs Lane, Forge Lane, Rays Hill, The Street, and vice versa.

🚧Skinney Lane
Skinney Lane stays closed 24 hours a day throughout Phase 1 for consistency. Access will be made available for anyone who needs it where it is safe to do so.

🅿️ Lombard Street parking
I raised the lack of passing space on Lombard, given it carries the Phase 1 diversion. SGN intend to create some gaps in the on-street parking, and KCC Highways will confirm that plan is still in place as the start date approaches. Franks Lane is not being used as a diversion, as it has been assessed as unsuitable.

📞 The works are WCB's, and access questions go to them direct:
[email protected]

Several months of phased works is disruptive and there is no dressing that up. Having the routes confirmed in advance at least lets people plan. I will post again if anything changes.

10/07/2026

📍 Kent Downs National Landscape: have your say

Kent County Council and the Kent Downs National Landscape partnership are consulting on the draft Management Plan for 2027 to 2032, along with a new Landscape-led Design Handbook.

Much of our area sits within the Kent Downs National Landscape, including Otford, Kemsing, Shoreham and the Darent Valley villages. The Management Plan sets out how the area is looked after over the next five years. The Design Handbook gives guidance on how new development should respond to the landscape and its setting. Both matter for how planning decisions land locally, so it is worth having your say while the consultation is open.

📝 You can respond online, or download a Word version to complete and return by email or post.

🗓️ The consultation closes on 19 July. If you want your views counted, get them in before then.

👉

The Kent Downs National Landscape partnership is seeking your views on the draft Kent Downs Management Plan 2027–2032 and the Landscape-led Design Handbook. The Kent Downs is a truly special and varied place: a landscape of drama and intimacy. From ancient woodlands and

08/07/2026

📍 Cotman's Ash Lane, Kemsing: road closure and water main replacement

South East Water is replacing 670 metres of ageing, burst-prone water main on Cotman's Ash Lane.

🗓️ Work is due to start on Monday 24 August 2026 and is expected to take around nine weeks.

🚧 The lane will be fully closed for the duration of the works. A diversion route agreed with Kent Highways will be signposted throughout.

The aim is a more reliable supply and fewer bursts once the new pipe is in, but there's no getting around the fact that a nine-week closure is disruptive for anyone using the lane.

Full details, including the diversion route, are on South East Water's website:

Our aim at South East Water UK to be the water company people want to be supplied by and want to work for. Manage your water account online 24/7 – View your bills, manage your move, make payments and manage your Direct Debit.

08/07/2026

🚧 Horton Road gas main works: what's happening and when

WCB Utilities are replacing the gas main along Horton Road. The work runs in phases from late July to early November. The phasing was revised to work around farm vehicles and the harvest, so any dates you saw last week have changed. These are the confirmed ones.

📅 Phase 1: Station Road to Jacobs Lane, 25 July to 10 September
Skinney Lane will be under full closure during the six-week summer holiday, while large vehicles cannot use Horton Road. Gate operatives will be posted at each end so buses and large lorries can still get through, one direction at a time. Horton Road itself will not close until School Lane reopens on 28 July, so the two will not be shut at the same time.

📅 Overnight resurfacing: A225 Dartford Road, between Calfstock Lane and Franks Lane, 10 to 16 September
Closed 20:00 to 06:00 on weeknights only, not weekends.

📅 Phase 2: Jacobs Lane to The Street (Bull Hill), 16 September to 19 October
Lorries return to their normal route. Buses divert via Jacobs Lane.

📅 Phase 3: The Street (Bull Hill) and Horton Road junction, 19 October to 6 November

📞 Questions or problems with the works go to WCB, who are running them:
Email: [email protected]
Danny Illsley, Head of Planning
Claire, Customer Liaison Manager

This is several months of disruption through the village and there is no way to pretend otherwise. The gateman arrangement on Skinney Lane should at least keep buses and larger vehicles moving. I will post updates if the dates change again.

05/07/2026

Have your say on Kent Highways & Transport

The six topics are:

- Accessibility(External link)
- Highways maintenance(External link)
- Public transport(External link)
- Road safety(External link)
-Tackling congestion(External link)
- Walking and cycling

Kent County Council is taking part in the 2026-27 National Highways and Transport Surveys, run by measure2improve on behalf of the National Highway & Transport (NHT) Network. Councils across the UK are inviting residents to share their views on highway and transport

05/07/2026

We have reduced debt at KCC by £142 million and made savings, but we still face serious financial pressures. Have your say. We need your opinions.

Consultation to inform Kent County Council's 2027-28 Budget.

09/06/2026

🚧 WHY ARE YOUR UTILITIES FAILING YOU, AND WHY DOES NOBODY TAKE RESPONSIBILITY?

Roads dug up with no warning. Water supplies collapsing. Infrastructure crumbling while utility companies pay dividends to foreign shareholders. Housing targets imposed on communities that can't cope. And no one telling you what's going on.

I've put detailed proposals to Reform UK to fix the broken utility and infrastructure system in this country, and they have now been submitted to HQ for consideration in our manifesto. Labour won't fix it. The Conservatives created this mess. Only Reform UK will put community first.

One thing first. None of this is within the power of your county council to stop. The companies cause the disruption, and the rules that protect them are written in Westminster, not at County Hall.

Here's what's wrong and what I'm proposing we do about it 👇

❌ THE PROBLEMS

🔴 Utility companies have an automatic legal right to dig up your road, set by national law. KCC cannot refuse or block them. In Kent, utility closures nearly doubled from 6,604 to 10,296 in three years, and 29% are now classified as "emergencies."

🔴 When they finish, they only have to guarantee the repair for TWO YEARS. After that, YOU the taxpayer pay to fix the potholes they caused.

🔴 The same road gets dug up again and again by different companies weeks apart. There is no legal requirement to coordinate.

🔴 The first new reservoirs in England since 1992 were only approved in January 2025, and not one will supply a drop of water before 2036. Over thirty years of population growth with no new storage delivered.

🔴 Water failures are no longer a one-off. My own division has been hit by at least two water outages already this year. Across the county, 24,000 homes in Tunbridge Wells were left without water for up to 14 DAYS last December, after the Drinking Water Inspectorate had warned South East Water of a significant risk of failure at its Pembury treatment works. A second outage in January hit around 30,000 homes across Kent and Sussex, and the company then pulled out of a council meeting called to examine its failures. The CEO's pay? £400,000 a year. This is not a council failing. It is a private company that did not invest, backed by a regulator and a government that let it happen.

🔴 "Road Closed" signs appear with no information about where the closure actually starts, which junctions you can still use, or who is even doing the work. You only find out when you hit the cones.

🔴 There is no requirement to tell residents in advance. No requirement to tell you when it's finished. Council contact centres get overwhelmed with calls about works they did not cause and cannot control.

In June 2025 the cross-party Transport Select Committee published 12 recommendations to fix this. In September 2025 the Government rejected 9 of them: lane rental for all councils, a five-year repair guarantee in place of the current two, an independent Street Works Commissioner, and tougher statutory fines. KCC itself gave evidence to that inquiry and called for the definition of emergency works to be tightened. The county council is on the right side of this argument. It is the Government that has refused to act, and the Conservatives had 14 years before them and did nothing.

✅ MY PROPOSALS TO REFORM UK

🔵 Mandatory lane rental: charge utilities up to £2,500/day for occupying busy roads. Make it available to ALL councils, not just five.

🔵 Redefine "emergency" works to stop companies gaming the system. If they knew about the problem 48 hours in advance, it is not an emergency. Five times the standard fine for abuse.

🔵 Five-year reinstatement guarantee. You break it, you own it. Not two years. Five.

🔵 An English Street Works Commissioner: independent enforcement, like Scotland already has. Hold utilities AND councils to account.

🔵 A legal "Dig Once" rule. When a trench is open, all utilities with planned work must go in together. No more digging up the same road three times in six months.

🔵 50% public ownership / 50% UK pension fund ownership of utilities. End foreign shareholder profiteering and redirect revenues into the infrastructure they've neglected for decades. The people who own the pipes should be the people who use the pipes.

🔵 Mandatory digital signage at road closures with clear information: which roads are affected, which junctions are accessible, diversion routes, QR codes linking to live info. End the guessing game.

🔵 14-day advance notice to residents before planned works. A named contact. A post-completion notification when it's done.

🔵 Utility companies, not councils, must fund public information services during major works. They cause the disruption, they pay for the communication.

🔵 A statutory Infrastructure Capacity Test before housing targets are imposed. No building thousands of homes on roads and networks that are already failing.

These aren't wishful thinking. KCC has said the same in its own evidence to Parliament. The Transport Select Committee recommended most of them. Scotland already runs a version that works. The one reform even the Government conceded was worth consulting on was tightening the definition of emergency works, the exact abuse residents across my division keep reporting. I've submitted the full package to Reform UK HQ for consideration in our manifesto.

The disruption is caused by the utility companies. The failure to give councils the power to stop it sits with the Government. Labour and the Conservatives built this mess. Reform UK will clean it up.

Marc Logen
Kent County Councillor (Reform UK)
Sevenoaks North & Darent Valley

03/06/2026

📚 SEND in Kent: where things stand, and what we are doing about it
Here is where special educational needs support in Kent stands, and what Reform UK's administration at Kent County Council (KCC) is doing about it. The system is under real strain, most of the causes sit with national government, and the Reform-run council is getting on with the parts it can control.

🏛️ First and foremost, this is a national problem
The Children and Families Act 2014 created Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs), and demand has risen by around 140% across England since then, to nearly 640,000 plans. National funding has not kept pace, and the National Audit Office warned in 2024 that the cost was becoming financially unsustainable. The government published its Schools White Paper in February 2026, but the substantive changes to EHCPs will not take effect until 2029 or 2030, and the largest funding increases are not due until 2028-29. Councils are expected to prepare now, on tight budgets. The reforms promise easier access to specialists such as educational psychologists and speech and language therapists, while there is a national shortage of exactly those staff.

🧱 What the council is building now
Kent is expanding specialist places so more children can be supported close to home rather than sent miles out of county. Recent council investment includes £20m creating 889 new specialist resource places in mainstream schools, expansions at Parkwood Hall in Swanley and Broomhill Bank, and two new special schools confirmed for Swanley and Whitstable through a government capital programme that the Reform-run council has chosen to push ahead with. More local provision is better for children, and it brings down the high out-of-county placement costs that built up over years.

✅ Performance is strong, and holding
Kent now completes close to 90% of EHCP assessments within the 20-week legal deadline, against a national average of 46%. That performance has held since Reform UK took control of the council in May 2025, alongside a serious effort to bring KCC's finances back under control.

🗂️ Honest about where Kent has been
This is not a clean record. Kent's SEND service was placed under a government Improvement Notice in 2023, under the previous Conservative administration, and it was lifted in 2024 after the service was turned round. Kent had run up a SEND overspend of £97m by 2021-22 and spent more than comparable councils, partly through heavy use of costly independent placements. The schools high needs budget is still forecast to be more than £136m in deficit by March 2026. The job now is to fix that without failing the children who depend on the system.

🚐 Post-16 transport, explained properly
After 16 there is no automatic right to free transport, even with an EHCP. That is national law, not a Kent rule. Within that, Kent County Council's standard offer is the 16+ Travel Saver bus pass, and the council is investing in independent travel training to help more young people travel confidently on their own, which builds real independence. For young people who genuinely cannot manage public transport, support continues, decided case by case and including exceptional cases, with a clear right of appeal. This is a tighter offer than Kent used to provide, because finite money has to be focused on those who need it most and on protecting the support the law requires. If your child needs more than the standard offer, apply, and appeal if you are refused.

👍 If this affects your family, do:
- Apply for the support your child needs, and appeal if it is refused. The panel exists for exactly these cases.
- Get free, independent advice from IASK before you appeal.
- Tell KCC straight away if you move house. Transport is assessed on your home address.
- Contact me if you live in my division and need a hand.

👎 Don't:
- Treat a refusal as the final word.
- Assume a standard bus pass is your only option if it does not suit your child.

🔗 Useful links

- Kent SEND Information Hub (the Local Offer): https://www.kent.gov.uk/education-and-children/special-educational-needs
- Post-16 transport policy: https://www.kent.gov.uk/about-the-council/strategies-and-policies/service-specific-policies/education-policies/post-16-transport-policies
- What the SEND reforms mean for parents (gov.uk): https://educationhub.blog.gov.uk/2026/05/schools-white-paper-what-parents-need-to-know-about-changes-to-the-send-system/
- IASK, free and impartial SEND advice: 03000 41 3000 or [email protected]

Changes to the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) system have been announced, as part of the schools white paper: Every Child Achieving and Thriving.

31/05/2026

🏘️ Otford Green Belt under threat: land south of Sidney Gardens

Catesby Estates is consulting on plans for around 110 homes on Green Belt land behind Sidney Gardens and The Old Walk.
I am opposed to this proposal and have submitted my objection to the developer.

🚗 My main concern is access. All traffic would funnel through The Old Walk and Sidney Gardens, with one practical route out via Bubblestone Road onto the A225. That route is already gridlocked at peak times. Adding this many homes would make it considerably worse.

🌳 This is also functioning Green Belt between Otford and Sevenoaks. Building here erodes the gap that keeps the two apart.

✍️ The consultation closes on 7 June. If you share these concerns, please send your own feedback to [email protected]. Individual responses carry far more weight than a single shared letter.

🔗 Details here: https://www.catesbyestates.co.uk/land/south-of-sidney-gardens-otford