Conservative councillor investigated by police

Stuart Tranter
Cllr Stuart Tranter

Rochester West councillor Stuart Tranter is facing a police investigation following a confrontation over a parking space.

The incident took place on Tuesday afternoon outside Kings School in Rochester.

It is alleged that Cllr Tranter confronted a woman collecting her children from the school. Kent Online have published accounts from both the woman involved and Cllr Tranter.

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Medway politics needs a timeout

In which Stuart Bourne laments how often Medway Council meetings descend into childishness and ponders what needs to change..

Keevil takes a timeout at a previous Medway Council meeting.

If you are reading this then chances are you are as big of a political nerd as I am, and the odds are that you also tuned in to see Medway Council’s budget meeting on 18 February. A moment each year that the current administration updates all the council members of the status of their finances and sets out their plans for the next 12 months. This is of course is a serious occasion, where the opposition has a chance to rationally critique the administration’s plans and set out their alternatives. What it shouldn’t be is hours of whiny and immature complaints about each other, interspersed with unnecessary political point scoring and childish insults. Well, that’s the theory anyway.

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New boundaries for Medway announced

Proposed Medway ward map

Following an extensive consultation process, the Boundary Commission has published a final proposed redrawing of the Medway Council map, which once approved by parliament, will take effect from the 2023 local elections.

Medway was long overdue for a review of its electoral boundaries, with many parts of the area growing significantly since they were last changed two decades ago, meaning some areas faced underrepresentation on the existing map.

Boundary reviews have to attempt to balance creating equal representation between areas, as well as maintaining coherent communities so their representation is not split between different councillors. Unsurprisingly, this task can be challenging, and many people will have differing views of what each local community looks like.

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Voice of the Leader: August

Once a month we offer a platform to the leaders of both Medway Council and the official opposition. Today, we have the latest column from Cllr Alan Jarrett, Conservative Leader of Medway Council.

Alan Jarrett

THANK YOU TO OUR WONDERFUL NHS STAFF, OUR SOCIAL WORKERS, AND ALL OTHER KEY WORKERS for keeping us safe during a time of an unprecedented worldwide pandemic. 

The coronavirus pandemic continues. Since my last column on 1st July an enormous amount has happened in Medway, and by and large things are moving in the right direction whilst the number of new cases being recorded thankfully remains minimal. 

It has been my overriding duty as Leader to ensure we do all in our power to alleviate the threat of a local coronavirus outbreak. In this to date we have so far been successful, but we only have to look elsewhere in the country – to places such as Leicester, and Oldham, and Swindon – to see how an outbreak can occur and the devastating impact that can have on the area concerned.

Those impacts include of course health, but also economic impacts. We are working hard to contain the health impacts, and working equally as hard to facilitate rebooting our local economy.

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Voice of the Opposition: July

Once a month we will be offering the Leaders of both Medway Council and the official opposition the opportunity to talk unedited about.. well, Medway politics. Today we hear from Vince Maple, leader of Medway Labour, the official opposition on Medway Council.


Although since my last Political Medway column some of the restrictions regarding COVID-19 have been relaxed we are still in the middle of a public health crisis.  Medway Council continues to deal with a civil contingency situation and we have new restrictions in place, such as the need to wear face masks.  As always my thoughts are with all those who have lost loved ones as a result of the pandemic.

It is worth recognising with everything else that has happened over the past few months, the vast majority of Medway residents have played their part in doing whatever it takes and for that I say a genuine heartfelt thank you – we must collectively all play our part as we move forward together.

Just over a week ago, we had a record breaking council meeting which lasted more than seven hours finishing at a couple of minutes past 2am.  As you would expect there was a wide variety of issues raised throughout the meeting.  If you missed it you can watch the whole thing here.

The Political Medway blog referred to the meeting as the “worst #MedwayCouncil meeting we’ve ever sat through.” – and you can understand why.

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Will new boundaries change the electoral map of Medway?

In which Alan Collins from Medway Elects tries to figure out if new ward boundaries would result in a different political map in Medway..

The Local Government Boundary Commission for England have dropped their draft recommendations for new ward boundaries in Medway.

The organisation has proposed a scheme of 24 wards, increasing the number of councillors from 55 to 60, one more than they originally proposed when they opened the initial consultation.

Whilst there is much which may be debated in the proposals, as The Political Medway’s resident data nerd, I’m going to be looking at one key question: what would last year’s local election results have looked like if it had been fought under these proposed ward boundaries, with one caveat: this is an entirely unscientific analysis as there is insufficient local data to produce a firm set of predictions. Instead, this is based on local knowledge from the 13 years I have been politically active in Medway, personal observations made at last year’s count and some more general assumptions. And I am going ward-by-ward in the order they appear in the LGBCE’s report.

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Voice of the Leader: July

Once a month we offer a platform to the leaders of both Medway Council and the official opposition. Today, we have the latest column from Cllr Alan Jarrett, Conservative Leader of Medway Council.

Alan Jarrett

THANK YOU TO OUR WONDERFUL NHS STAFF, OUR SOCIAL WORKERS, AND ALL OTHER KEY WORKERS for keeping us safe during a time of an unprecedented world-wide pandemic. 

As I write this column on 1st July it is revealing to reflect on the last few weeks, and consider some of what has been happening. Crucially to consider how people have been reacting to the ongoing understandably cautionary tone coming from government as we all seek to contain the spread of infection. 

In the main it seems as though most people have behaved responsible, thinking of their own health, and mindful of the health of others by following government guidance on social distancing in particular and also personal hygiene. There have sadly been exceptions, which I will come on to later.

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Elections on lockdown

In which Alan Collins from Medway Elects ponders the consequences of all 2020 elections being postponed..

If you cast your minds back to November, when the biggest crisis the country was facing was the threat of a no-deal Brexit and politicians and activists were busily campaigning in the third general election in four years, I signed off my predictions for those elections with a flippant comment about 2020’s Police and Crime Commissioner election.

Whilst it was written tongue-in-cheek to appear as though I was hoping for a break from elections, as someone who geeks out on electoral data, any vote is a source of unashamed joy. But of course, back in November, no one could have predicted that our lives would change so much in so little time, as they have by COVID-19.

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Voice of the Opposition: June

Once a month we will be offering the Leaders of both Medway Council and the official opposition the opportunity to talk unedited about.. well, Medway politics. Today we hear from Vince Maple, leader of Medway Labour, the official opposition on Medway Council.


This is the third Political Medway column since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK – we continue to see hundreds of individuals pass away every day.  We must never forget that behind those huge numbers are personal stories, families and friends mourning in challenging circumstances with social distancing.

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