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We can turn the tide on COVID-19 crisis


THE last few days have nally felt like spring. The warmer weather and longer days have coincided with friends and family being able to meet up outside in groups of six and the return of outdoor sport. While it’s still a long way from being a normal Easter weekend, we are in a much better place than we were this time last year in terms of controlling of the virus. In the past year we have increased our testing capacity to over 1 million tests per day, we’re on track to be producing 70% of our PPE demand in the UK, and over 860,000 people have stepped forward as NHS Volunteer Responders.


It has also been a year since the UK’s


Vaccine Taskforce was created. It’s hard to exaggerate just how important the work of this group of scientists, business leaders, and civil servants has been in helping to turn the tide on this virus. We now have three vaccines approved for use in the UK, with over 30 million people across the country having received their rst vaccination – including over 800,000 people in Kent.


One of the highlights of the past few weeks has been meeting people involved in the vaccine rollout. When I visited the Glebe Medical Centre in Harrietsham in February, volunteers were clearing snow from the roads


By Helen Whately MP for


Faversham and Mid-Kent


and scraping icicles from the roof to make sure not a single day was lost in getting these life-saving vaccinations into people’s arms. This hard work and dedication can be seen


by staff and volunteers in vaccination sites across the country – many of whom have been working at out for the past three months. The success of the vaccine rollout has helped us take the rst steps out of lockdown. As progress continues, we can look forward to further restrictions being lifted in April, with more shops re-opening, pints in pub gardens, and people nally able to get a haircut. Everyone can play their part by following the guidance, taking up the offer to get vaccinated, and getting tested regularly. There are now 24 symptom-free testing sites across Kent, and free testing kits are being offered to businesses. Together, we can turn the tide on COVID-


19.


Opinion


praying for better times, Maidstone Borough Council carries on hiring. The authority is looking for an undoubtedly indispensable Biodiversity & Climate Change Officer with an upper wage bracket of £39,720. A much-needed Innovation Manager commands up to £40,313 while a Homeless Manager picks up £28,930. Naturally, the biggest bung goes to the Principal Building Surveyor on a princely £46,535 plus £5,000 market supplement and car allowance. Other benets include "a career-average pension scheme, professional fee payment, exible working (including opportunities for home working and job share), employee benets package and generous leave entitlement". Nice work, if you can get it.


W I


T’S been a rocky road at Bearsted Parish Council over the years and minutes of a recent extraordinary full council meeting suggest all is not tickety-boo in the borough’s leaest enclave. The report states: “The chairman reported his disappointment at the lack of teamwork by a small number of councillors who were undermining committee decisions. The chairman asked for solidarity and support from all members to enable the council to move forward and away from ‘old ways’.” What can it all mean?


Plan will disappoint everyone M


ONE thing is certain as plans to build a 4,000- home garden village at Lenham slowly unroll. Each participant faces disillusionment. Local opponents are already disillusioned.


Who wants houses jammed 40 to the hectare in your backyard, built over the next 20 years? In the 1960s and 1970s, 25 homes to the hectare was the norm. Today? Go see those tiny houses jammed around the old TVS stu- dios, built 36 to the hectare, with cars crammed on the pavements: that’s the picture that will emerge at Lenham’s “garden village”. The eight landowners face disillusionment.


Forget the idea your fields will yield 100 times agricultural value from developers. Several hun- dred million of taxpayer’s money will be spent on infrastructure – putting in main roads and sewers to make sure developers can make a 20%profit when they hopefully show up to buy parcels of land. But landowners will likely only get the “resid-


ual value” of the land: what’s left when all building costs are deducted. Maidstone council might have thought it


clever to hike the number of homes planned for Lenham from 1,000 to 4,000, to ease pressure elsewhere in the borough. But it was grandiose


By Peter Bill Property journalist


and author


to declare themselves “master developer” and start spending money on consultants with no developers in sight. Disillusionment is evident in the wise deci-


sion to bring in Homes England, a government quango, which can spend taxpayers’ money to make the land viable. But there is a danger of further disillusionment. Homes England is hav- ing one of its periodic “what are we for?” re- views. Early abandonment would be the best and


bravest course of action. There are 49 garden towns and villages planned in England, with a capacity for 400, 000 homes. Many have been on the stocks for decades. l Maidstone resident Peter Bill is co-author of Broken Homes: Britain’s Housing Crisis; Faults, Factoids and Fixes. He is a former Evening Standard columnist who edited both the Estates Gazette and Building magazine.


I


EMBERS in Bearsted PC are currently sworn to secrecy over the mysterious “project A” – and even the lips of landscape architects Purple Arbour are sealed. Owner, the charming Roedean-educated Vanessa Foster- Crouch, enthuses: “It’s denitely going to be wonderful, but I can’t talk about it.” A little bird tells me it all hangs on an imminent land transfer.


HEAR the Liberal Democrats will eld Tim Mumford in the borough council elections in Bearsted. Surely not the same Tim Mumford who applied for a Conservative candidacy a couple of years ago? It surely is!


Y REVELATIONS that Tory renegade borough councillor Jonathan Purle is on a no carbs, high fat diet sparked a utter of excitement on social media, not least from Lib Dem Dan Daley who perceptively described the rationale as a "perverse Purle of wisdom".


M I


RUN into my old chum, Chris Garland, erstwhile Conservative leader of the borough council who tells me relations with his Tory counterpart at KCC, Sir Paul Carter, were not always cordial. But he tells me: “Now that we don’t see each other, we get on ne.”


Chin chin! 47


HILST the business world is grimly clinging on to furloughed staff and


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