Furious residents say the demolition of historic buildings as part of a multimillion-pound film studios project should never have been allowed to happen.
Contractors have already knocked down a series of lean-to structures connected to abandoned engine sheds in Ashford.
Also in today’s podcast, new public artwork showing the lifelike figure of a woman submerged in a river has been branded “offensive, creepy and disturbing” – with some calling for it to be removed.
It follows the installation of the controversial statue in the River Stour in Canterbury by a world-renowned underwater sculptor.
A woman has avoided jail after her dog savagely attacked a dad and left him needing surgery.
She’s admitted being in charge of a dog dangerously out of control causing injury after the attacked at Hersden Industrial Park.
An Ashford woman says lives are being put at risk from dangerous potholes and cracks in the pavement.
Furious residents have also slammed the authorities for failing to fix a single pothole while two of the worst roads were recently closed for other maintenance.
And a two-year-old brown bear in Kent is to undergo pioneering brain surgery in a UK first.
Boki, who lives at Wildwood Trust near Canterbury, has been suffering from seizures and recently underwent an MRI scan.
We'll see you in the next one. Kent online news news you can trust. This is the Kent online podcast. Kate Faulkner. Hello. I hope you're okay. Thank you for downloading today's podcast on Thursday, September 19th. Coming up today, we'll hear from a Kent woman who says lives are being put at risk because nothing is being done about potholes in roads around Ashford. We'll also bring you an update on a brown bear living in a Kent zoo who last week had to go for an MRI scan, but first taking a look at our top story today. It's concerned some historic buildings in part of Ashford are being knocked down to make way for a new film studio. Oliver Leonard has been following this story for the Kent online podcast. He joins me now. Oliver, can you tell me a little bit about the scheme and the buildings being demolished? Hi, Kate. Well, this multi-million pound development is part of an ambitious scheme to transform the 12 acre sites at the Newtown railway works in Ashford into four film studios and more than 300 homes. Some tractors have started to knock down a series of lean two structures connected to a band and engine sheds at the sites. And why are residents upset? Well, now demolition work has actually started at the site. Residents are particularly upset about some of the historic buildings which are being knocked down. People believe the lean two buildings, which were previously a blacksmiths, boiler shop and tender shop, should have been saved. But bosses behind the development have stressed that they have permission to flatten these buildings. And why did Council approve the plans in the first place? The planning commission for the whole scheme was approved in April 2020 before finally being signed off last September. The Council and developers believe that the development will ensure the railway heritage is recognised while transforming the site, which has laid dormant for more than three decades. Thanks, Oliver. Kent Online News. Her manners died after getting into difficulty while swimming in Ramsgate. Emergency services were called to Ramsgate Beach yesterday afternoon where the swimmer was pulled from the water by the RNLI. He was passed into the care of paramedics but died at the scene. Five people have been charged as part of an investigation into a suspected drugs network in East Kent. Police searched eight locations in Dover, Deal, Ramsgate, Chatham and Dimchurch last Thursday. They seized drugs, cash and weapons. Three men and two teenagers were charged with conspiring to supply Class A drugs. A woman has avoided jail after her dog attacked a man at an industrial park near Canterbury. Police dials was bitten on both legs in Herzden last October. He had to have surgery and stayed in hospital for three days. 54-year-old Svenye Fexi, who lives in Bramling, wrote in Bramling, admitted to being in charge of the dog at the time. She's been ordered to pay £1,000 and must keep the dog muzzled and on a lead at all times when in public. The refuse burglars in Seven Oaks are posing as police officers. Two men were seen in the Kippington Road area last week, wearing clothes similar to that of officers. They're also being linked to attempted car thefts. On line news. A video showing a serial shop lifter kicking, spitting on and hitting a co-op worker in Favisham has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times online. 34-year-old Lucille Willett from Fostle Road was apprehended by employees and later arrested but avoided jail. We've shared the video on our socials at KMFM News. Meanwhile, as new data shows stoplifting increased by almost 20 percent last year. Kent's police and crime commissioner is working with local businesses to help reduce it. Matthew Scott met with business owners, town centre managers and police who all agreed shoplifting was becoming more blatant and that staff were often being threatened. He's now encouraging retailers to sign up to their local "My Community Voice" scheme which puts staff in direct contact with their local police team. A charity has warned there's still a high number of bailiffs being used by councils in Kent to collect unpaid tax or parking fines. Bigger show Medway used them the most in the last year with 17,000 cases sent to debt collectors. The money advice trust says they should only be used as a last resort. Now, a bungalow owner in Laddingford is demanding his insurance company take urgent action after waiting two years to have a garden-land slip fixed. Former police officer Steve Han says his grandchildren can't play in the back garden. He's also got no chance of selling his property. Steve says the problem began when his neighbours started to clean out a large pond. Two years ago, during the summer, around about July, my neighbour decided to dredge their pond and my land runs alongside. At the very weekend they got a tractor in there and dredged out a lot of silt. My land collapsed along its entire length and sank down about six inches. I 12 foot wide through my brand-new patio and up through to the drive. The person responsible was admitted liability immediately and contacted his insurers. That's the NFU. They took months and months before they finally said to me verbally that they would get my garden back to what it was. I've had to put in several complaints to them because they've been so slow. They never responded to any emails I sent. I tried phone calls and messages were left and never responded to. We're now at the end of the second year, and all we've got to now is there are contractors willing to do the work, but they're not sure exactly how to do the work. I've now got the NFU telling me they're going to find somebody at some point to come along and do a report on how to do the work. We're now getting to the end of the window of opportunity of when that work can be done because the pondered moment is at its lowest, but obviously going into September, October, November, we get sufficient rainfall, that pond will fill up again, we'll miss this window up opportunity and it will go into the third year next year. An NFU spokesperson has said with more complex claims, insurance may need to undertake a number of surveys and other measures in order to agree on an approach before work on the damage begins. They say they've previously explained to Mr. Han that they are working to progress the complex repairs and they've apologized for not providing him a consistent level of communication. Kent Online News The Kent Online podcast has been told there's been a steady drop in the number of businesses closing in Kent. Figure show just over 1,500 shut in the second quarter of this year. It's down from 2,500 at the start of 2022, due to price is the chief executive of the Kent Invicted Chamber of Commerce. The data encouraging is actually showing there's been a decline in number of business closures over the last few quarters now, so the last 12, 18 months, the number of businesses that are closing each quarter is actually declining. That's a positive. There are obvious trends in that analysis when you start to look at when those closures peak if you like. It's after Christmas, it's after the summer holidays, it's after three solid days. That really echoes what we're hearing from the ground if you like across the county with the businesses we're talking to is that those that are involved in direct consumer spend, so coffee shops, retail outlets, tourism and hospitality. Those obviously peak times, a lot of retailers alone are Christmas and of course they get the other side of Christmas. They didn't prove to be as lucrative as they'd hoped and of course they can't sustain themselves through the sort of lean months, and so yeah, we tend to see those closures sort of spike a little bit of those times of the year, but overall the trend is actually positive. We are seeing fewer closures, so it's not all sort of doom and gloom. That must be a good thing for you to hear because the cost of living crisis is something that's been on everybody's minds and particularly for business owners for quite a long time now, and it has been tough conditions for them, hasn't it? It has really, and this comes back to that sort of discretionary consumer spend, and I think not all of the sort of business sectors are sort of going to take heart from this particular piece of evidence. What we're finding is that if you are still reliant on direct consumer spend, then it is still incredibly tough, and all the time that people feel that they have to sort of watch the pennies, they're not going to sort of go out and spend as lavishly as they might have done in the past. They are actually doing pretty well, exports are slowly starting to recover. We are of course waiting for the budget in October, that will then make a big difference to business confidence and to whether a lot of the big projects will go forward, so that then in turn may translate into optimism amongst the businesses, which then means the staff and the employees feel more secure in their future, and hopefully will then start to spend a bit more money with those retailers and those hospitality companies that are out there. While we're still seeing businesses closing, are we seeing new businesses setting up, are people still taking that leap? Yes, absolutely. Correspondingly, there is a growth in a number of business startups, but again, you sort of look at the detail of the data here, and what we're seeing is that these are a lot of small and micro startup, sometimes as a second income, so they're not actually the high growth or medium sized businesses that the economy was sort of really yearns for at the moment. So again, those figures need to be taken with a pinch of salt. We are still overall, I think, waiting for some sort of signal from governments to what the future landscape is going to look like. There was a lot of optimism host election. The Rose Garden conference, the Rachel Reeve speech has sort of caused a bit of concern. Everyone's waiting now for the October budget. Once with that side of things, I suspect we'll see how things are going to run roll, but I would predict that things will start to recover quicker. He's been speaking ahead of Labor's first budget next month. The chancellor is being encouraged to give firms stability. It comes as TGI Fridays has gone into administration, putting their site at blue water at risk. The companies in the process of trying to sell the restaurant to new owners, which it hopes to complete by the end of September, as well as one of their sites in Kent. TGI's have 87 other sites across the UK, meaning thousands of jobs could be lost. Kent Online News Parents have spoken out after children were left upset and confused over the Medway test. People sat the exam on Tuesday, but many were expecting to have 50 minutes rather than 30 for their English test. Medway Council are looking into the issue, but say the 30 minute time was correct. Now the Kent Online Podcast has been told lives are being put at risk by the number of potholes in roads and pavements around Ashford. New Town Road and Cudworth Road have been singled out as being particularly bad. Margaret Pike lives in the South Willsborough part of town and needs a mobility scooter to get around. She's been speaking to reporter Leanne Castle. I think it's a problem throughout Ashford, the whole of Ashford, but I mean for local people, like the people in Newtown and like myself in South Willsborough, we've got enormous great potholes down Cudworth Road, and footpaths in one area, you can't get by five if you had to because you've got a telegraph pole stacked right in the middle, and then on gas bin day, you've got to manoeuvre the dust bins to get around, so it is difficult and because people like myself that have got mobility scooters, are getting damaged scooters because of the potholes. I have to use a road now because this scooter is bigger than the one I had before and therefore it doesn't fit the footpath at all. I can't get on the footpath very well in Cudworth Road, because I'd have to come off to manipulate the telegraph pole that's stuck halfway in. Things like that. I was telling you about new Town Road in the city, I would say that this one would like to sit out. I haven't actually used new Town Road since I've had this new scooter of mine, I use the outlet. I come down Cudworth Road which is on a par with this one in very bad condition. I said round through the river walk, which also needs attendance because it's got brambles growing over the side, so a cyclist if he's not careful could lose an eye, and then I go up the slope through the Aztec car park and up through the outlet and come out here and then on the way I'm happy. So is the reason you don't use the scooter because of all the holes? Yes. Yes. And describe to me when you go over the holes in your scooter, what does it feel like? Well this one is pretty well balanced, but the smaller ones that haven't got so much suspension, it is jump and bump and I've already damaged my back from my little one that I used to have. This one I don't feel them quite so much is just like going over a small hillock, but for the smaller scooters it is very very painful, I'm spying, very painful. I knew you know quite a bit because you have scooters and scooters, what's the feeling among everybody else? Well most of the other scooter people that I'm friendly with have all said the same, the roads and the book are all disgusting. The politicians come around, they want us to vote for them, but when we want anything done where are they? They're never around. Newtown Road has only recently reopened after a seven-week closure to lay electrical cables, but residents complain the potholes weren't fixed at the same time. It's also close to where those film studios are being built. The company behind that project said it was working closely with Kent Highways to create two entrances to the site and the inclusion of a pedestrian crossing to improve road safety to Ellison Way. They go on to say as part of these works we will also be resurfacing this area of the road and finally have added we are currently working through the final details in section two seven eight agreements and we are hoping to commence these road improvements prior to Christmas. We've also been in touch with the County Council who have confirmed the area is due to be resurfaced, in the meantime minor repairs are being arranged. On line news, a county-wide restriction on the movement of farm animals has been brought in after a rise in cases of blue tongue. The viral disease was found in cows in Canterbury in November before spreading to the Sandwich Bay area in December and then later to Favisham, a temporary control zone now covers the whole of Kent to reduce the risk of its spreading further. There have been calls to remove a new statue of a woman submerged in the River Stour in Canterbury. The public artwork has been called creepy and disturbing. It's been installed near the historic Westgate Towers, critics say it's offensive and the imagery of a submerged figure reminiscent of a drowning victim is both morbid and utterly tone deaf given the tragic drownings that occur along our coastlines. Over Council say, as a piece of art, it's meant to be thought-provoking. Gold coins that were found in a field in Kent have sold for more than a hundred thousand pounds at auction. A hoard was discovered by a metal detectorist in Lenham two years ago and date back to 55 BC. They were expected to fetch 20,000 pounds but were sold for five times that with a final bit of 103,500 pounds and there's an update today on a brown bear living in Kent who's been suffering seizures. Last week we told you about Bockie who had to be sent for an MRI scan. The results show he has fluid on the brain and medication is no longer keeping the symptoms at bay. John Ford is from the Wildwood Trust me Canterbury where Bockie lives. We actually transported Bockie via van to Nolfitz Patrick's Centre and he underwent an MRI scan and the results from that came back that he actually is suffering from something called hydrocephalus which is a build-up of fluid on the brain. Unfortunately we're not entirely certain still what is the cause of that. We obviously will keep working to find out and we'll do our absolute best by him. But there is a surgery that Bockie can actually undergo so he can have a chump put in that will lead from his brain down into his stomach and it will actually alleviate the fluid that's building up on his brain. This is a very, very rare thing so this has only ever happened that we know of, it has only ever happened to one other bear in history. That bear was operated on successfully by a specialist. His name is Romaine Pizzi, a specialist international zuvet and he has actually, he's volunteered to actually come to Wildwood and he's going to help us and he's going to perform that surgery on Bockie himself which is absolutely amazing so let's say you know it's only happened once in history and we've been unbelievably lucky to be able to get the vet who performed that operation before he's going to come here and do it again so that's the best news, that's the best possible result we can get for Bockie. Since the first sedation of Bockie and where we collected bloods and samples and we ran all our tests we then put them onto medication which actually quite successfully for quite a long time it actually controlled his seizures and we saw, either we saw just some very slight trembling or we saw nothing at all which was brilliant. Unfortunately recently in say the last two or three weeks or so we've just noticed he's just succumbing a bit more to seizures again so we haven't seen any fall but there's a lot of shaking going on and we're just not sure that that medication is able to cope with what's happening to him any longer so that's why we've actually opted to go for the surgery and try a proper fix. Ken's online sport. Adam Petey sent a message to a Kent swimming club after their pool suddenly closed. Folks and sports centre shut to the start of the summer holidays when the charity running it said they could no longer afford to keep it operational it's been suggested the site is put up for sale but the Olympian hopes it reopens. I was starting to hear the closure of the Folks and sports centre and the loss of swimming pool to the hundreds of swimmers for other area. As the Olympics this summer demonstrated swimming is a sport that can inspire millions. If it wasn't for the local swimming pools across the country none of us in Team GB would have been able to fill our dream. It is the opportunities at the beginning that produces the results at the end. Swimming is a sport that provides for your mental and physical wellbeing as well as being a vital skill in keeping people of all ages safe in the water. It is sport that is enjoyed by every generation and to see a pool close in a coastal town especially it's especially suddening. I hope that you can join me in supporting the fight to reopen Folks and sports centre and ensuring that future generations gain the opportunities they deserve. More than 150 people lost their jobs at Brieflies in Tennis, Kent's Emma Rettikani was back in action in the career open later the 21-year-old from Alpinton is taking on China's U-1 in the last 16. That's all from us today thanks ever so much for listening don't forget you can follow us on Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok and threads you can also get the details on the top stories direct to 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 [MUSIC PLAYING] [BLANK_AUDIO]
