Local democracy reporter Robert Boddy looks at why councillors seem reluctant to make any big promises - and what that could mean for the upcoming election…

When covering local councils, you meet a lot of people who feel that officials are more interested in saying “No” than “Yes” and that councillors would much prefer it if they didn’t have to do anything at all.

At a Medway Matters Live event last week, the issue around Medway Maritime Hospital being incapable of dealing with demand was raised and a number of audience members demanded a new hospital be built.

When the response came that it’s not within the power of the local council to build a new hospital, you won’t be surprised to hear the audience didn’t sit back down and say “oh alright, sorry I asked.” They got more annoyed.

The panelists were right to say the council can’t build a new hospital - and they have other initiatives they hope will work - but it’s another tally for politicians and officials saying “we can’t do that” to a problem people face.

Why do they say no? Well, because many of them have been in local government long enough to know that things don’t happen quickly or easily.

To build a hospital would take a combination of work from the government, NHS England (as long as that still exists), the Kent and Medway Integrated Care Board, the council’s public health and planning teams and construction companies, to name a few.

That’s not to mention that as soon as a new site for this new hospital is picked, there will be people who say it is in the wrong place or it’ll cause road problems for the area and endless other complaints.

Councils say no because it’s not realistic, but just because it’s not realistic doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen.

And people know this; they know building a new hospital isn’t impossible, it just requires more will-power to struggle through all the difficulties than politicians and officers are willing to give.

The natural conclusion is to look for someone who claims to have that will-power, to have that determination and who’s going to be radical, totally ripping up the “way things are done” in order to get results.

This is the pitch from Nigel Farage and Reform: “Labour and the Tories are the status quo, and you don’t like the status quo, do you?”

It’s the “blow things up” party, saying if the parties which have been in control are offering A and B then they’re offering Z.

Councils, of course, do things and sometimes do them a lot better than we give them credit for. But in an atmosphere where it feels like nothing works, those who say councils are just full of people sitting around being paid to twiddle their thumbs get an audience.

Without wanting to sound like I’m accepting the status quo too much (because things do need to change), there are certain things which clog up local government which voters actually like, even if they won’t admit it.

We could have got HS2 built on time and on budget, but it would’ve required getting rid of all the regulations and blitzing through the countryside and neighbourhoods with no requirement of compensation.

We could attract lots of industries to our shores if we allowed them to dump their waste and pollutants. It would create a lot more jobs, but is that a reasonable price to pay?

The truth is, we want solutions, but we also want some of these protections too, and things are done the way they are because of the regulations we actually quite like.

If Reform do get in and if they take control of KCC they might find difficulties between those true believers who absolutely want to blow things up and those who start to accept there are a lot fewer jobsworths than they’d expected.

There are plenty of ways to stay in the know when it comes to politics in Kent and Medway.

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You can also listen to our Kent Politics Podcast. On this week’s episode, we speak with Nigel Farage as he eyes his party making gains at the KCC elections next month.

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