Canterbury Labour Councillors

28/08/2026

22/07/2026

LABOUR IS CAPPING BUS FARES FOR EVERYONE: From January all single bus fares will be capped at £2, cutting costs for millions.

18/07/2026

Exciting to be with other local councillors in Kent to welcome our new Party Leader and Prime Minister. Andy Burnham made Gravesend his first local visit after his Westminster speech.
Alan Baldock Paul Prentice - Canterbury Councillor for Barton Mel Dawkins Councillor and Connie Nolan KCC Labour Canterbury City South Cllr Harry McKenzie - Sturry Ward

17/07/2026

KEEP THE TAPS RUNNING

Enough is enough. Last night the full Canterbury City Council passed Labour's motion to Keep The Taps Running, following a series of damaging water shortages and outages across our district, particularly affecting our coastal communities.

The motion was put to the council by Cllrs Naomi Smith and Charlotte Cornell to ensure we have accountability, explanation and infrastructure in place.

We also want to make sure that South East Water fixes the life-expired and unreliable infrastructure that has caused so much disruption to residents and businesses across our district.

This motion was debated and agreed cross party to pass. The full text, with amendments, is below:

This Council resolves to ask Cabinet to consider:

1. requesting that South East Water provide Canterbury City Council with a detailed and publicly available explanation, examining: o the causes of recent supply failures; o what permanent measures are still required to eliminate future drinking water outages to current homes; o delivery timescales for those measures. o how their supply plans ensure that tankering operations, are not becoming a substitute for long-term infrastructure resilience.

2. investigating and commissioning a report back to full council on: o what planning, regulatory and legal mechanisms are available to Canterbury City Council and / or the Local Planning Authority if water infrastructure delivery is not keeping pace with housing growth; o whether development phasing, or development pausing, could be considered where infrastructure is failing to reliably supply existing homes.

3. requesting that the Leader write to South East Water, OFWAT and The Drinking Water Inspectorate setting out the concerns raised by residents regarding repeated failures in potable water supply and seeking assurances that their interventions will help infrastructure delivery will keep pace with existing and future demand

4. requesting further of South East Water, confirmation that they will be publishing their anticipated Resource Position Statement, as expected by the Environment Agency’s current timetable, in Spring 2027.

5. including South East Water (or any subsequent water provider) as a consultee for all planning applications of ten or more dwellings (or any development with similar water supply demands) with immediate effect.

6. tasking officers to research and draft a policy to sit alongside the Local Plan which ensures no development will be undertaken without a clear, phased plan to ensure that local water supply capacity will be sufficient to accommodate the new builds without degrading service to existing residents.

19/06/2026

Some great news for a Friday afternoon: we've been successful in bidding for a £1.67 million grant from Homes England to help build 11 new bungalows on a council-owned brownfield site that will join Canterbury City Council's social housing stock in Autumn 2027. Planning permission for the project was secured last year and full design work has been completed on the project, which will cost £4.3 million in total.

We look forward to welcoming residents into these beautiful new homes.

Great news today that we will start work on building 11 new two-bedroom accessible and adaptable chalet bungalows in East Street later this year, after our successful bid for £1.67 million towards the cost of the scheme.

The money is coming from Homes England’s Social and Affordable Homes Programme and is the final piece of the financial jigsaw for the project to enable shovels to get in the ground.

It is costing £4.3 million in total, with other funding coming from a grant from the Brown Field Release Fund, borrowing through our ringfenced Housing Revenue Account and section 106 funds from developers.

The East Street scheme, on the site of the former Sturry Road Social Club, will provide much-needed adaptable and accessible homes – a type of property that is not ordinarily built by developers – and is therefore meeting a demand that the private sector does not tend to cover.

Once built, they will become part of our social housing stock and the people who move in will become council tenants.

These energy‑efficient, low‑carbon homes incorporate renewable technologies and sustainable design principles.

In particular, air source heat pumps will provide heating and hot water, solar panels on suitable plots will generate renewable energy and electric vehicle charging points will be installed in all the homes.

Planning permission for the project was secured last year and full design work has been completed. Both of these factors were crucial in securing the Homes England funding, as it was a clear demonstration it is ready to go.

Work on the ground is expected to start in the autumn, with a 14-month build time leading to completion and handover to the stock by late 2027.

Cabinet member for housing, Cllr Pip Hazelton, said: “We are absolutely delighted to have been successful with our grant application, which means we can get cracking on this project in just a few months’ time.

“It is the job of a council to provide homes to people who need them most and these accessible and adaptable bungalows will transform the lives of the people who move into them.

“And in doing so we will also be removing a derelict, run down piece of land in Sturry and using it for these well-designed and attractive new homes.

“So it’s a double win for local people and we can’t wait to get started.”

19/06/2026

17/06/2026

Our FIFA World Cup campaign is up and running! 👏

17/06/2026

The England match today may only be 90 minutes, but the abuse can last a lot longer.

Football itself is not the cause of domestic abuse, but research shows that rates increase when England plays - by 38% when they lose a match and 26% when they win or draw.

Whatever the score, people affected by abuse can suffer.

Let’s kick out abuse once and for all this .

Visit www.domesticabuseservices.org.uk

17/06/2026

🎉 BIG NEWS FOR BUSES IN BROAD OAK 👇

🚌 It was announced by Stagecoach at the Joint Transportation Board last night that they intend to restore the number 7 bus route in September. They had hoped to do it this month but they were prevented from doing so by the Shalloak Road closure.

This will be a life changer for a lot of local residents in Broad Oak and Sturry, including many elderly folk on Bluebell Woods and Dengrove Park who were effectively left stranded.

The route and timetable will be clarified closer to the time when the bus returns in September.

This has been an extraordinary collective effort by various elected officials and members of the public. We want to thank everyone who has been involved, including many of the residents of Dengrove Park. This is not our achievement alone, it belongs to so many of us who spoke up and got involved.

As your ward councillors, we got involved in 2024 and promised that we would do our bit in reaching this outcome and here is what we contributed since then:
👉 Secured 351 signatures on a petition.
👉 Knocked all the doors in Broad Oak with a survey.
👉 Held a meeting with the commercial director.
👉 Raised it at every opportunity in council meetings.

We released a statement in 2024 sharing the positive news at the time that Stagecoach wanted to restore the number 7 route, following the pressure we had put on them, and were looking into how to do it. It is amazing that they stuck to that commitment.

⚠️ What is most important now is that people use it as much as possible. With the way funding is, Stagecoach could axe it again if it becomes unviable. So please encourage everyone you know to use the bus, support the route and keep it viable.

📧 If you have any questions, let us know at [email protected] and [email protected]