Plans for a state-of-the-art medical centre in Sittingbourne are up in the air after concerns were raised over the cost of the rent.
The new facility in the Bell Road development would serve an additional 6,000 patients, but NHS bosses say the scheme needs further work.
Also in today’s episode, official figures show a record number of asylum seekers have crossed the Channel in small boats during the first quarter of this year.
791 people made the dangerous journey over the Easter weekend, taking the total for 2024 so far to 5,435.
There has been a rise in vehicle thefts across Kent, with police data showing which makes and models are stolen the most.
An expert has been telling us why certain vehicles are more popular with thieves, and why recovery rates have gone down.
An appeal has been launched to raise £1 million to buy the air ambulance that covers Kent.
The charity that runs the life-saving service say they need the cash by the end of May.
A mum who was left bed-bound after being collapsing at Disneyland says her medical detection dog has helped her enjoy life again.
Candy Adams from Istead Rise started fainting while on a family holiday in 2016 and was eventually diagnosed with postural tachycardia syndrome.
And in football, the Gillingham boss has apologised to fans after yesterday's 5-1 defeat.
Their chances of reaching the leage 2 play-offs have been badly damaged after they lost to Harrogate Town away from home.
Kept on line news news you can trust this is the Kent online podcast Lucy Hickmott hello hope you're okay and had a lovely Easter thanks ever so much for downloading today's podcast on Tuesday the 2nd of April. Our top story plans for a state-of-the-art medical centre in Sittingbourner up in the air after concerns were raised over the cost of rent. The Chestnut surgery in East Street had been preparing to take on the new facility in the Bell Road development which would allow them to add an extra 6,000 patients to their books but NHS bosses now say the scheme needs further work on its cost-effectiveness. At reporter Joe Crossley he's been speaking to Sarah Seabridge who's landlady of the yellow stock's micro pub. How badly needed is something like that in the town. Hugely very much so I mean obviously we have got walking centres at Fervisham and the island but with the population numbers in Sittingbourn and the rising numbers we need something here more central for everybody. And have you struggled in the past to get appointments? Oh yes all the time. I do find that unless you desperately need an appointment on the day you can use the online services or 111 but again you can walk into Fervisham or if you don't drive or you're not well enough to drive then you're kind of stuck. And what struggles do people from people that you maybe talk to what kind of things they say about just the area in general in terms of infrastructure and how things are running here. Right well we obviously we all know about the desperate situation with medical services all over the country not just in Swale but also with all that new housing it does concern a lot of my customers and myself that there's not enough schools, nursery facilities, obviously doctors, surgeries dentists you know it's another huge gap there for everybody so you know that needs addressing before new housing goes up and it's not essential government and needs to really think it's not local. As spokesperson for NHS Kenton Medway says no decisions have been made yet but they need to consider both value for money and affordability of all proposals. They went on to say making sure people have access to high quality GP services is a priority and we will continue to support Chestnut surgery in exploring all options for the future. Kenton Line reports. On to some other news now and a man's been flown to a London hospital after being found injured in Chatham. He was discovered at a property on the high street yesterday afternoon. A gilling a man who used a ripped up T-shirt to strangle his girlfriend has been sent to prison. A court was told Ellis Reeve was under the influence of drink and drugs when he threatened to kill his victim in January last year. The 27 year old who worked for Cityfiber has been locked up for 21 months. Official figures show a record number of asylum seekers have crossed the channel in small boats during the first quarter of this year. 791 people made the dangerous journey over the Easter weekend, taking the total for 2024 so far to 5435. Analysis shows that's a third higher than this time last year and about 10% higher than 2022. The home office says it demonstrates why the Rwanda policy must be implemented as a deterrent but the leader of Dover District Council has raised concerns about whether the scheme will work. Speaking to Simon on the Kent Politics podcast, Councillor Kevin Mills is calling for a different approach. The Rwanda situation may work but I sometimes wonder how much of it is sort of safe or rattling and this is what we've got to do. It's going to be exceptionally expensive. I'm not sure we're actually taking the numbers we've seen up to now. Will it work? I think even Israel stopped it. I think they were sending some there once upon a time. I have my own misgivings of spending that amount of money trying to deter migrants from coming across when we're underfunding hospitals, the health service, you can't get a dentist, the schools are falling to pieces, the roads are a complete letter nightmare, potholes everywhere. It's all about a balancing act but that'll be for the incoming government, whoever they may be. A few weeks ago, we had not the alpha gone and she was talking about the small boats, the whole industry of making the boats and supplying the engines and the life jackets and all the rest of it. More fundamentally, she was making the point that the whole nature of forced migration has changed because people aren't fleeing persecution or conflict anymore. They're fleeing climate change and famine and that's not going to change anytime soon. Even if you were able to stop the boats, they would just find another way. They've always found another way. What happened was that the government gave lots of money to the French to secure Calais because as you'll remember and I remember, we had large numbers coming over in backs of lorries then, we had people running onto the trains at Euroboat tunnel and coming over. So you secure that element. The next thing is you change your modus operandi. Then it went to small boats coming over. That doesn't mean that we're not still seeing people in backs of lorries, in aircrafts, in yachts, etc. But it's not just about fleeing war or persecution because of your religion or your sexuality. As climate change grabs hold, we will end up with sections of the world that will never grow crops, probably never see rain. So that's going to force people to move and it will force people to move all over the world in various directions. So I don't see the issue going away. The calls may be changing, but the issue, I think, is probably going to be with us for an awful long time. Charities are calling for a complete reform of the UK's asylum system with safe and legal routes for refugees. Kent Online News. It's claimed a junction on the A2 near Canterbury is leaving drivers having to take their lives into their own hands. There are calls for warning signs to be installed at Outensted Lane in Barham. It comes after a car ended up in a ditch next to the tea junction. Children's football pitches in Medway have been damaged by vandals on quad bikes. Bosses at the Lord's Wood Youth Club say the grass has been ripped up so badly no one can play on it. Volunteers are working to repair the damage so matches can go ahead. There's been a rise in vehicle thefts across Kent with data showing which makes and models are stolen the most. According to police figures, Ford Transit vans are among the highest with nearly 850 taken across the county in last five years. Ford Fiesta's and Land Rover discoveries are also near the top of the list. Experts say recovery rates are also down as criminals are getting better at bypassing modern vehicle security systems. Philip Swift is a technical director at specialist motor insurance loss adjuster claims management and adjusting in Westmooring. These are people who aren't taking a car for the fun of it. They're out to gain. They want to profit and the only way they do so is to get hold of that vehicle, get it to wherever they want to take it, do whatever they wish to do with it and profit from it to sell it on or trade it, to use it in some fashion. So the number of recoveries is understandably going to fall. And that's where we find ourselves now. We find ourselves with the vehicle security that everybody was applauding as I wouldn't say had its day, but it's got to a point where it's probably happened over 10 years ago. The criminals understood the systems. They also evolved. They found their ways around the systems, the electronics. They bypass them. They don't need keys necessarily in all the circumstances. And as a result, they're able to take these vehicles and the vehicle crime is now increasing. You've got to have some sympathy for Ford because of their popularity, because there's a demand for their product. It's not necessarily that security is poorer than any other vehicle. It's simply that there's a demand for it. Their price level is good for the tool concerned. And vans, as you say, their work tools and their beasts that are used day in, day out, they can get high mileage. They need replacement parts. And that's where these transits are going. There was a, it was almost a standing joke sort of 10 years ago when transits were being stolen, they only manufactured them in red, white and blue. And therefore, cloning them was simplicity. You could be blind and one in three would get it right. They're just high demand vehicles. Sprinters, similarly, not as high numbers, but they're not as popular. They're not the vehicle of choice by many who labor suspect the transit van is a cheaper option. And I don't necessarily think that it's more basic, but they seem to be a rugged go-to workhorse. And therefore, you know, as people use them and they become worn, so they want to replace them, whether they're being cloned, whether they're being broken for parts, or possibly it's simply that their engines are just very good, along with possibly a gearboxes. So they're being broken down, sold for panels, engine component shipped abroad. I think again, with Fiesta's, you've got a highly popular vehicle that's involved in collisions. They can have breakdowns, you need components. So there's a demand either to take them and use them as a whole or for their components, because there is such a large pool of them out there. They're also an economical vehicle when it comes to acquisitions. So again, the popularity, the demand for them is high. Ken's online reports. A petition for a cap on the number of taxi drivers in Tumbridge has been rejected. Some cabbies say there are too many, which means they're left waiting longer for a fair. Council bosses say they'd have to carry out expensive work to assess demands if they wanted to bring in restrictions. There's been a mixed reaction to plans to build a new McDonald's opposite to GP surgery in North Kent, and applications been put in to convert the former Barclays Bank in Swanley Square Shopping Centre. Critics say it'll downgrade the area, but others are hoping it'll bring new jobs. Our major railway line in West Kent is going to remain closed for at least two weeks following a land slip. No trains are running between Tumbridge and Edenbridge, while engineers carry out repairs to the embankment. It was shut on a good Friday with replacement bosses running until the 15th of April. An appeal has been launched to raise a million pounds to buy the air ambulance that covers Kent. The charity that runs the life-saving service say they need the cash by the end of May. Oliver, from our colleagues at KMTV, has been speaking to David Welch, whose chief exec of air ambulance charity Kent Surrey Sussex. By buying the aircraft, we are able to save around half a million pounds every year. By saving that half a million pounds, that enables us to fly for longer, to reach more patients and to save more lives. So those were the totally unforeseen second-serving stuff that this fundraiser was never on the car originally. No, definitely not. When we planned for the year, we had absolutely no plan to run a £1 million fundraiser. But I think it's absolutely the right thing to do. You know, buying our own helicopter makes such a saving. And we're cognizant of how lucky we are to get such generous support from the communities. And we want to make sure that we maximise the impact of everything pound and every pain that we get from our donors and supporters. So by making this saving, and by making more shoes of the money that we have got, and asking people to help us to buy the helicopter, I'm going to save half a million pounds a year, which is massive. You've probably speak to paramedics, doctors, all the time who are out there in the field. Also families of people who have been saved and people who have been tragically lost but who were helped by the KSS. Anyway, do you mind sharing some of those stories and experiences for us? Yeah, absolutely. I think I'm again really privileged to be part of the team and I get the opportunity on occasion to go out with the doctors and the paramedics in the helicopter and get to understand and experience the first hand the work that we do and the impact that has and the lives that we save. I also get the chance to meet the patients when they come back and just to thank us. And we always see them as part of the family. I think to understand any patient's story is really, really powerful and really inspires me and inspires all my colleagues to work even harder to save more lives. Because why is the KSS so important to people here in the county? It's a big area, lots of rural parts, so quite difficult actors by roads. Why is it so important that the KSS can operate at full capacity? It's massively important because what we can do with our helicopters and with our experienced team of doctors and paramedics is and obviously the pilots who fly the aircraft and the people who dispatch the aircraft as well. The important thing is getting the emergency room to the patient as quickly as we can, being able to deliver that equivalent to in-hospital treatment at the roadside on the beach in the park, wherever the patient needs us in the shortest possible time and being able to perform really complex procedures. Complex surgical procedures deliver emergency anesthesia to be able to give blood, to be able to keep people's hearts pumping. All of that we bring in the helicopter and the doctor and paramedic have that skill set to enable them to do that, to keep that patient alive. And then the helicopter allows us to transfer the patient to the hospital that they're going to. And because of the space within the helicopter we can continue to treat the patient. Without KSS we wouldn't be able to do that. The helicopter's a lifeline that organisation helps every day to save lives. We respond to almost time callouts every day, over 3,300 callouts last year. So the number of people that we impact on, the number of families that we have together, help keep it together is incredible. As part of the appeal, supporters will get the first ever chance to donate to have their name on the helicopter. Kent Online News. A former secondary school in Medway could be knocked down and replaced with more than 100 homes. St John Fisher on Ordnance Street went on the market last year after people's moved into a new £40 million campus. Developers have bought the site and hoped to build 77 houses and 62 apartments. Elsewhere a school near Gravesend has revealed plans to expand to meet a growing need for secondary places. Bosses at Northlete Technology College want to increase their intake from 164 to 189 by creating a new year 7 class. Temporary buildings could be used to help cope with the extra pupils. Now a Kent mum who was left bed bound after collapsing at Disneyland says her medical detection dog has helped her enjoy life again. Candy Adams from Isted Rise started fainting while on a family holiday in 2016 and was eventually diagnosed with postural tachycardia syndrome, also known as POTS. Her golden doodle Teddy can smell when her blood pressure drops and candy says it's made her feel safe again. Our reporter Keeley has been finding out more. So how has Teddy changed your life? Well, he's, I'd say he's pretty much saved my life really. I went from a stage of not being able to leave the house or get out of the bed at all to having the confidence to be able to go out in public knowing that he will alert me for many sort of imminent collapses, but also stay with me if I, if I did collapse, which then kept my children safe as well. Obviously they were really young. My daughter had been recently diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, which meant it was even more important that I stayed. But I knew she was safe if I sort of collapsed out or obviously to try and prevent me from collapsing. So for me, he'll start by just sort of staring at me. It's quite a subtle sort of, you know, you need to stop, you need to sit down. If I do ignore him, because sometimes life's a little bit busy and we do, he then will ramp it up. So if we're out, he may sit down, refuse to move, stop in front of me. If we're in the house, he'll sit in front of me. Yeah, he's got a lovely stubborn streak. So if I, if I do ignore him, which obviously I shouldn't, but like I said, sometimes, sometimes life gets in the way, then he'll just ramp it up so that I listen to him. She's thanked the charity Medical Detection Dogs for all their help and support. And finally, there are calls for a permanent tribute to an explorer from Kent, who walked from one side of the earth to the other. George Meagan spent almost seven years travelling more than 19,000 miles from South America to Alaska. There are now calls for a memorial plaque in his hometown of Rainham following his death at the age of 71. Kent's online sport. Football and the Gillingham Bossers apologise to fans after yesterday's 5-1 defeat. Their chances of reaching the league two play-offs have been badly damaged after they lost a Harrogate town away from home. The Gills are now ninth in the table, with only four games left of the season. Head coach Stephen Clemens spoke to our reporter Luke Cordell after yesterday's match and says the performance from his players was unacceptable. They're a good group. It's the first time today. It's the time I've been here where I've seen a little bit of weakness and they've dipped under the pressure, whatever you want to call it, made individual mistakes. It's not something I liked. We can't have it any days like that again, can't have it. If we do, then obviously we have to make changes, don't we? We also, we've tried to go to a back four to try and be more on the front foot. But it does, when you go to a back four, expose our areas of our play. That's something we've got to look at as well. For that 45 minutes, that's clearly the worst you've had as management, isn't it? Definitely tough as well, stood there watching it. Very tough. Momentum is a key thing in football, and it always has been. The momentum was all with Harrogate, and it was very, very hard to stop that flow. You hope the boys can weather it, and if you're going to get beat, you don't get beat five. You get beat two one, but you don't go under like that. You don't go under like that. No, I didn't enjoy what I saw from all of them today. And I guess now you have to go back and decide whether to stick with it, or brad for them, let them have another go, or mix it up a bit. I haven't even got there yet at all, but I don't think anyone can knock on me door, kind of. I make changes. No. And you said that they're off, they were going to be off tomorrow and now they're in, is that what it is? The plan was to give them two days off, but we'll be in there, we'll be in there and get them prepared for Bradford earlier. How do you approach those last four games now? No, you need to win them all. That is all on us. I always want to win. So I came here to win for the first half. We're on track to do that. So it's shocking what we've all seen today, and none of us, I'm sure, expected that. And we have to react, but obviously I'll just get prepared like I normally do for every game, but the players have got to turn up and do better than better than what we've seen today. That's all from us today. Thanks so much for listening. Don't forget you can follow us on Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok and Threads. You can also get details on the top stories, directed at 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.
