Bosses at a bar in Ashford have made a U-turn on their decision to go cashless after some customers said they would not go back.
The Glass House opened in the Lower High Street in 2018 and management recently announced the move on socials.
A Kent homelessness charity is warning lives could be lost as funding for their services is set to be cut.
Porchlight say they will be losing out on around a million pounds a year which could mean closing some of their hostels.
The government's Rwanda bill has suffered five defeats in the House of Lords.
It means it will now go backwards and forwards between both houses of Parliament while MPs and peers try to reach agreement.
A leading Kent business expert has been telling us what he is hoping to hear from tomorrow's Budget.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is due to announce the government's economic plans. which could include tax cuts and a reduction in the amount spent on some public services.
And in football, Gillingham make the long trip north to Barrow in League 2 tonight.
It follows their 2-0 win over Salford City at the weekend which moved them into the play-off places.
"This is the Kent online podcast, Lucy Hickmont." Hello and thanks for downloading today's podcast on Tuesday, 5th March, hope you're doing okay. Our top story bosses at a bar in Ashford have made a U-turn on the decision to go cashless. After some customers said they wouldn't go back, the glass house opened in the lower high street in 2018 and management recently announced the move on socials. Our reporter Oliver Leonard has been speaking to one of the owners, Daisy Guy, who says they had a mixed reaction. "Some were positive in the respect of why this is happening and they're trying to understand which was great. Some were, that's it, we know young women who's in the glass house. We've all heard a few private messages saying that we hope we get shut down and that we actually go out of business. I think there's probably trolls on the internet and everything else." "I'm surprised by that reaction." "I expected a reaction. I didn't quite expect probably the extent of the reaction because personally I agree with cash being news. And like I said, this was purely what this business needed at that point because there are hundreds shutting down continuously. We all know that bars are being massively impacted. And the difficulty we face is that every time our prices go up, the only way to make more money is to charge more to our customers, which is what we're trying to avoid doing. Either minimum wage going up, that's a massive impact on our business. So we've got to find money from somewhere. So what we're trying to look at is, "Okay, if we've got a shortfall where every cash that we have is a discrepancy in cash, if we can make sure that doesn't happen, that means that we're in more funds to make sure our prices don't go up." The debate continues in the comments section of this story on our website. Some people say times have changed and cash is no longer useful, but others reckon going cashless makes no sense. "Cents online reports." A fannet man who left another man needing life-saving treatment following a stabbing has been sent to prison. Craig Judd carried out the attack in the garlange part of town last summer. The 25-year-old from Fulham Road has been sentenced to seven and a half years. A made-stone bar and nightclub is going to have its license reviewed after police were called more than 40 times in the last 14 months. Zoo bar in the market buildings could see its opening hours reduced after reports of fights between customers and heavy-handed staff, with one manager being convicted of assault last year. Can police now want the venue to close at midnight rather than 3 a.m. or have the sale of alcohol limited? A senior doctor who faked bills for medical procedures has been given a 12-month suspended prison sentence. Muhammad Sate fraudulently made nearly 18,000 pounds in inflated claims to insurers while working as an orthopedic surgeon at the private Falkham Manor Hospital near Darkford. The 61-year-old from Chiselhurst will need to repay the money with interest and also carry out 180 hours of unpaid work. Kent Online News Homelessness in Kent is under the spotlight today as a leading charity fears having to close its hostels. Porch lights say they'll be losing £1,000,000 of funding at the end of the month. The cash previously came from something called homeless connect, but the councils had to cut back due to pressures on their budget. Kate's been speaking to Chris Thomas from the Canterbury-based charity. We're losing a lot of funding, and to be honest, the impact could be devastating. It's putting our homelessness hostels at risk of closure, and we have other services that help people who are facing homelessness, and they could disappear too. It's a really scary situation. What sort of services are under threat? Do porch lights, you mentioned hostels are somewhere to sleep? Do they provide food, shelter? What sort of services look like to be cut? We have hostels that are roughly 180 people who call home. They're not just buildings, they're places that people can live, and while they're there, we'll give them emotional support. We'll help them rebuild their lives, so by the time they're ready to leave, which might be a year or more later, they won't go back onto the streets. They'll go back into, they'll find somewhere stable to live, and it helps break that cycle of homelessness that people can fall into. But the cuts are going to affect other work that we do. We do a lot of work with people who are facing homelessness, maybe because they're struggling to keep a relationship with their family going, or they have a dispute with their landlord, and we go in, and we try and prevent that from happening. But the cuts mean that a lot of that work is going to be scaled back. We run, or we ran a homelessness helpline for people who were worried about their situation, and again, what that's able to do, and the advice it's able to give, that's how to be scaled back as well, because there just isn't the money. When you are allocated the funding, is it spent on, is it paying employees? Is it paying for hostile rentals? Where is the money spent from the government? I mean, it goes to a few different places, but there is a fair bit that goes on staff wages, and the reason that that's important is because when you're homeless, it's a really traumatic situation. So if someone comes into one of our hostels, they've probably experienced quite complex trauma. They probably have quite difficult mental health problems, or perhaps like addictions to drug, or drug or alcohol, that need to be managed before they're ready to properly rebuild their lives. So just putting a roof over someone's head, it's not enough. The people who we work with, they need specialist support to overcome all these other issues that they're facing, so that they're ready to go back into work, go and get a place of their own and sustain that tendency. Without that kind of support, they could live with us, but when they leave, they can easily just end up back on the streets before too long. One of the people relying on support from Porchlight is 32-year-old Stafford. He's been chatting to Nicola about how the charity has changed his life. They've been an absolute lifesaver. I don't know what I would have done without Porchlight. I suppose I would have still been in my car at this point. I was really in a rotten way. I had a couple of different exes who kicked me out, family. I just haven't had a stable background. I mean, I suppose even since I was a kid, I didn't have a stable background to grow up with. So, you know, having, and it was easy since I've even had a room. Just having a room has been amazing. I don't care that I had to share a bathroom or whatever. Being a room is such a peace of mind. You can just relax. It's not like being on someone's sofa where people are walking in. It's certainly not like sleeping in a car that what I was doing. When I didn't even have room to lie flat, I was sort of cramped up on the back two seats. It was rotten and you don't feel safe either. You don't feel safe. I mean, as a man, I didn't feel safe. Because anyone could be coming by you and they know you're there in a car. I mean, even when it's bad when you're in a tent, but you can sort of even hide away then when you're in a car, you're right by the road and people notice when you found a good sleeping spot, they start to notice you're there. And having that room stuff, you said how obviously it made you feel a lot safer. It gave you that space mentally. How much did it help you? Oh, 100%. I mean, to think like in my head, I couldn't have coped with it. I wasn't getting enough sleep. And when I don't get enough sleep, it's like everything else goes, like my concentration, just doing anything well. You can't do it because it's like you're constantly half awake. And so having a room, it was brilliant for me mentally. It's been a step and also it's meant I've not had to rely on people who, frankly, family who have been abusive towards me, you know, exes who used to kick me out over anything. I didn't know constantly arguing, sleeping on sofas and things. You know, to be away from that and have my own place. It's safe. You know, it's brilliant. 100%. I can recommend a porch light anymore as someone to donate to. It's got to be one of the most top best causes you can donate to, really. It really has porch lights, say cutbacks by central government to blame for their loss of funding. We've contacted the department for levelling up housing and communities for a response. Here's what they had to say. We are now spending an unprecedented 2.4 billion pines to help people at risk of homelessness and support rough sleepers, including 220 million pines recently announced, which will help fund fizzens of beds and specialist support services across the country through councils. We've also given local authorities in Kent up to 17 million pines through the rough sleeping initiative. Whilst we've made good progress and rough sleeping remains below pre-pandemic levels, there is more work to be done to meet our ambition to end it entirely, and we will continue to work with local authorities to help people off the streets for good. Kent County Council have also given us a comment. They say they're very aware of porch lights concerns and are working hard with them to ensure vulnerable residents continue to get the help they need. Most accommodation directly funded through the Homeless Connect Service will be retained and discussion about future arrangements are continuing. Kent's online reports. Part of a largely empty industrial estate near Folkestone is to be converted into flats after hardly any businesses came forward to occupy it. Hawkins Business Park opened in late 2019, but only one company showed an interest in using one of the buildings. Councillors have now given the go-ahead for part of the site to be used for housing. Elsewhere plans for two new housing projects on the Hube Peninsula have officially been quashed. It's more than three years since they were first submitted and led to 30,000 objections. They were concerned the properties would impact nearby habitats used by nightingales. An abandoned pub in near Folkestone could be knocked down or turned into flats. The lighthouse in in Capal Lefern closed in 2019 and is now going up for auction. It has a guide price of £600,000. Kent Online News. The government's Rwanda bill has suffered five defeats in the House of Lords. It means it will now go backwards and forwards between both houses of Parliament, while MPs and peers try to reach an agreement. There are concerns plans to send asylum seekers to the African country would break international law. Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby was among those who spoke during the debate. The object of this group is around the rule of law and that is the main subject we're looking at. There is a difficulty if we go back to the development of international human rights law, particularly in the period after 1945, in totally separating domestic and international law. The rise in international human rights law grew out of the horrors of the 1940s, where a government that in 1933 in Germany had been legally and properly elected passed horrific laws that did terrible things starting from within a few weeks of the election of Adolf Hitler. That continued and most historians agreed that the first two elections gave the Nazi party a legitimate majority. Winston Churchill's advocacy of the European Court of Human Rights after the Second World War grew up in order to give a fall back where domestic law was not doing the right thing by linking it to international law and ensuring that there was a stop that said well you can do this perfectly legitimately domestically, but that doesn't mean it's always right and always the right thing to do. Now we're not in any situation remotely like that, let's be clear, the government is not doing something on the scale of what we saw at that stage, but the government is challenging the right of international law to constrain our actions and the point of international law is to stop governments going ahead with things that are wrong. It's feared roadworks near a Kent McDonald's could call six weeks of disruption. Bobbin Hill in this sitting ball will be closed for gas network upgrades from the 19th of March after that similar work will start on Sheppy Way near the Key Street roundabout. As angering paddock word after plans for a new sports hub was scrapped, a 30 acres site close to the railway station had been earmarked for a 3G pitch, separate grass football pitches, two rugby grounds and a cafe. The idea is now being shelved that councils say they're aware of concerns. Now leading Kent's business expert has been telling us what he's hoping to hear from tomorrow's budget. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is due to announce the government's economic plans, which could include tax cuts and a reduction in the amount spent on some public services, due to prices, chief exec of the Kent Invictor Chamber of Commerce. Well there's sort of three things we're hoping for and one thing that we're hoping they don't do, but I suspect they probably will, we'll do the don't-do's first is please don't plan and play up to the voters. They're probably going to do a tax break, but I'm not quite sure how much of an impact that will really have and clearly that's driven by behaviours, they want to get re-elected so they're going to try and do whatever they can to curry favour. We had a tax break early in the year but I'm not sure how many people noticed so it makes you wonder really the right thing to do. It's also the climate we're in as well, we know local authorities are struggling to meet their statutory obligations as well as obviously doing all the good things they do. So actually sort of taking more money out of the government coffers is not a great idea right now, not for the long term. So we're hoping they don't try and pander to whatever wins votes for the next election, but I think we're probably cynical enough to know that may not be the case. In terms of the other things we're looking for, one is a movement on the VAT threshold. The vast majority of businesses in Kent and Medway are small and micro businesses so whether you're a wedding florist or a photographer or a teacher or something like that. The tax threshold of about 85,000 pounds is actually quite low and so that's stopping people from expanding because they don't want to bump up another 20% on top of their prices to customers so they're going to stay under the threshold and actively prevent themselves from growing. So we're looking for some movement on that. It's not going to take a lot out of the government coffers because actually 7% of the VAT tax take comes from the larger businesses so we're looking to see if they can try and make some movement on that. Planning terrible issues around planning is stopping so much development and so much investment. Not just obviously on house building which is quite commonplace and we know the need for housing and the issues that's facing young people these days but around some of the bigger infrastructure projects they are disruptive and they do need careful consideration but equally there needs to be a longer term view. These things take quite often longer than the traditional political cycle of five years so there needs to be some movement on that and again local authorities tend to be the heart of that process. Again they need the resources and they help to move things forward. The other thing we're looking for really is around skills trying to make sure that the government is investing in the future. They talk about productivity. We know there's a change in demographic older people, fewer younger people. So those that are working in businesses there needs to be sort of incentives around encouraging employers to invest and train in their resisting staff as well as your new start coming in so that they can move into that to be more innovative and ultimately they'll be more competitive. So those are some of the three things we're looking for. The one thing we hope you don't do so we'll see how tomorrow plays out but I suspect I know which way they're going to go on this. Two critically endangered orangutans have arrived at an animal park in Kent. The brothers travelled from Switzerland and are now settling into their new home at Port Lim near Heith. Bosses say the ultimate aim is to send them back to the wild. Plans have been put in for a new bar with live music in Dover. A folkston based company akin to open a venue on Snargate Street. Bosses say it could be used by local bands. And a mystery woman from Kent has won a million pounds on the lottery. Mrs H played a lucky dip on the website for a Euromillions draw last month. She's chosen to stay anonymous and plans to use her winnings to pay off her mortgage. Kent's online sport. Football and Gillingham make the long trip north to Barrow in league two tonight. It follows their two-nil win over Sulford City at the weekends which move them into the playoff places. Gill's reporter Luke Cordell spoke to head coach Stephen Clemens after Saturday's victory. Was there some tight limbs after the match? Yeah there will be but thankfully we got ourselves a couple of goals ahead so I could actually make a few substitutions and give a few of the boys a rest because I've got another game on Tuesday. But I couldn't give them too much of a rest because obviously the game wasn't done and you've got to make sure that you get three points here first. We saw Sean Williams coming off the bench as well. Firstly parents I think for you as well. Yeah Sean's, Sean's trained well for a long long time and it's been unfortunate to not be involved more. You have to make some tough decisions in this job and that's been one of them but I have to say he's conducted himself really really well. He's been a top professional around the place and you can see why he's still playing at 37 years old because the way he trains and the way he is around the club. So please come to get on and you've done well when you come on too so good. Will George will absolutely be able to be fit for Tuesday was he ready for today and does not select him. George was available to be only trained for two days so I decided to leave him behind on his occasion. And as a whole you must feel like you're really going on a bit of a role and things are starting to click. Yeah I felt good about things for a while. To be honest you get a tricky result or you draw or you get beat which I say we've only been beat twice in 12. Then you know there's a lot of noise around the place but as I said to you after the game last weekend was that we only ever achieved anything we're together and yeah there will still be tricky results between now and the end of the season but we all stay together for all us one and we'll have a chance of being successful in this football club. Kickoffs at 7.45. Annie Cricket Megan Belt has been confirmed as the new captain for Kent's women's team. The 26-year-old has made over 100 appearances for the club after making her debut at the age of 16. She's also helped Kent's win three county championships and two T20 cups. That's all from us today. Thanks ever so much for listening. Don't forget you can follow us on FacebookX, Instagram, TikTok and threads. You can also get details on the top stories direct your email each morning via the briefing to sign up just head to kentonline.co.uk News you can trust. This is the Kent Online Podcast.
