A group of residents in Maidstone claim a parking company is trying to charge them from parking on their own land.
Half a dozen signs were put up in a private car park just off Northumberland Road by UK Car Park Management. Hear from one of the residents and what the housing association have said.
Also on today's podcast, a Whitstable man who was infected with hepatitis and HIV as a child has spoken about how it's affected his life.
Roger Newman is one of the victims of the worst treatment disaster in NHS history - known as the infected blood scandal.
A report following a public inquiry into the scandal is being published today.
Libraries in Kent could be forced to employ security guards following a rise in anti-social behaviour.
Data obtained by KentOnline shows a 500% increase in incidents against staff and other library users between 2020 and last year.
Dozens of people gathered at the Kent coast over the weekend to protest about sewage spills.
It was all part of a national campaign, with demonstrations taking place in Hythe and Viking Bay in Broadstairs.
We're being urged to be on the lookout for Asian Hornets ahead of the summer season.
While they're not a threat to humans, they do prey on pollinators which can have an impact on our food security.
There are calls for two Kent MPs to do what they can to ensure fair football governance for their local communities.
Chatham and Aylesford's Tracey Crouch and Damian Collins from Folkestone and Hythe will be part of a committee looking at the Football Governance Bill line by line.
And, former Chatham Town boss Scott Lindsey has led Crawley to promotion to league one.
They beat Crewe 2-0 in the League Two play-off final at Wembley yesterday.
Kent Online News. News You Can Trust. This is the Kent Online Podcast. Nicola Everett. Hello, hope you're okay and had a good weekend in the sunshine. Thanks so much for downloading today's podcast. It's Monday, May the 20th. And first today we're going to hear from a witsable man who was infected with hepatitis and HIV as a child. Roger Newman is one of the victims of the worst treatment disaster in NHS history. Known as the Infected Blood Scandal. Now, Roger has hemophilia, which means his blood doesn't clot properly. When he was still at junior school, he was given infected blood products that have been imported from the US. He's been telling us how it's affected his life. Initially, the first main problem I remember was when I was still at junior school. I was around about 10, I think, and I had hepatitis C and I went completely journed here, so I was kind of yellow all over. I had exhaustion. I could hardly walk. My mum had to carry me around. So my parents and my mum, particularly, has always been there to try and help me. She's given up most of her life ready to look in after me, and my brother, who was also diagnosed at the same time with the same conditions. And then the real bombshell, though, was when I was 16 and my mum told me that I'd contracted HIV. Yeah, it's like the world just fell apart for me at that time. And yeah, I was in shock, I think. My doctor said I probably got a couple of years to lie to live. And, you know, I had to be really careful about who I told, because the stigma was so extreme. And it was called the Gay Plague, and it just felt like almost like a modern-day leper was how I felt. You know, part of me just wanted to hide away. And generally, I'm quite an open sort of person, but I suddenly felt I had this dirty secret that I had to live with and always sort of trying to hide from other people. And I was, yeah, my world felt completely shattered, not just because I, even at that age, I kind of thought I'd never be able to have children, I'd never be able to do all those things that I want to do, and the absolute dread and terror of becoming ill with AIDS was, you know, just hard to put into words. Because there were people around me, other hemophiliacs that were literally dropping night flies, you know, some people that, you know, went to the same hospital, the same clinic as me, kind of hearing stories of other people getting ill and passing away and, yeah, it's for a fact. It's thought around 3000 people have now died as a result of contracting hepatitis and HIV from these contaminated products between the 70s and 90s. A report following a public inquiry into the scandal is being published today, victims and their families are hoping it'll bring some justice and accountability. We'll bring you further reaction to the publication of that report in tomorrow's podcast. You'll also be able to watch a report on Kent tonight on KMTV. Kent Online News. Other top stories today in a driver from Rochester who caused a serious crash on the M2 has avoided being sent to prison, so he didn't miss the birth of his child. Aaron Bond left his passenger with serious injuries after losing control and flipping his Volvo into the back of a lorry between Chatham and Gillingham. The 31 year old from the high street in Rochester has been given a suspended sentence and banned from driving for two years. Two men have been taken to hospital following an attack in Maidstone. The air ambulance was called after they were injured in the night rider street area in the early hours of yesterday. They're thought to have been assaulted with a metal object. A report found post-Brexit border checks will cost UK businesses 470 million pounds a year. Plans to inspect EU goods coming into ports including Dover and the Eurotunnel of Folkestone have been delayed five times. The National Audit Office says there's still no clear timetable for the four changes while money's been spent on infrastructure and staff that are not needed. They're a tougher parking restrictions in Medway from today as new so-called red routes come into force. Cameras have been installed in five busy parts of the towns and anyone caught stopping there will face a fine. Council bosses say it'll help ease congestion and insist it's not just a money-making exercise. Now, this is one of our most read stories on the website right now. A group of residents in Maidstone claim a parking company is trying to charge them for parking on their own land. Now, half a dozen signs were put up in a private car park by UK car park management. Now, four homes just off Northumberland Road each have two spaces for parking just behind their properties. And people living there were shocked when the signs went up saying they couldn't park unless they had a permit. Penny Jackson is one of them. We all own this as our own car parks and last Friday some main came around and put these signs up. And when I said to Ed, I'm sorry, you put them in the wrong place. We didn't really take a lot of notice over me. And since then I've been trying to contact UK car parks to get a reply from them about what they're going to do with it. We want the signs down and we want it shifted as soon as possible. The signs told drivers said face at £100 fine if they use the spaces without that permit. Well, we have been in touch with Golding Homes and they've told us the signs were actually put up by mistake by the parking management company and they have now been removed. They've also apologised for the upset it's caused. We've been in touch with UK car park management for a comment. Kent online reports. A headteacher's vowing to improve an underperforming school near Darkford after it was issued with a termination warning notice. Local primary was given the second lowest offstead rating following an inspection last summer and the Department for Education is threatening to withdraw government funding. It means the school could close down or be absorbed by another multi-academy trust. Elsewhere the boss of a nursery in Folkestone has criticised offstead after being given the lowest possible rating. Inspectors raise concerns about teaching and safeguarding following a visit to first learners nursery in Chariton last month. It's gone from good to inadequate and the manager says she's planning to put in a complaint. Next today, libraries in Kent could be forced to employ security guards following a rise in antisocial behaviour. Data obtained by Kent online shows a 500% increase in incidents against staff and other library users between 2020 and last year. 108 cases of antisocial behaviour were logged by staff in 2023 up from just 17 years earlier. We've been speaking to Isabel Hunter who's the chief executive of libraries connected. It's a whole variety so it might be teenagers coming in and throwing stuff around, being really noisy, disturbing other people. It might be members of the public coming in, adults coming in and being really quite abusive to library staff. It might be people with drink problems coming in and again behaving. Sometimes it's about disruption and abuse between library users. I think there's a fight between not directed at the library staff, but it's people coming in to the libraries that have already got a fight going on and then that carries on in the library and disruption in that way. There's a whole range of things that are maybe quite minor to things that are much more serious that involve having to call the police and physical injury and serious damage to library equipment and so on. Any level of disruption or intimidation, it's absolutely not appropriate in a library setting. Especially in many libraries where we have very low numbers of staff now or loan staffing. Even incidents that we might think are quite minor, they can be really intimidating and absolutely inappropriate. Library staff shouldn't be having to face this when they go to work. I think there's a challenge for some libraries that have taught to the police or some of these other partners in the council or town centres. They think, "Oh, it's the library." They don't appreciate that the level of disruption or violence or abuse can be quite severe. They think, "Oh, what's happening?" Someone ruffled the library books or something. I think it really varies and there are other library services that actually we've had just excellent support from other agencies out there. And others are still feeling that sort of crying out for help and not quite getting one in need. Kent County Council owns and runs 99 library buildings across Kent. You can read our special report today at Kent Online. Kent Online reports. Dozens of people gathered at the Kent Coast over the weekend to protest about sewage spills. It was all part of a national campaign with demonstrations taking place in Heith and Viking Bay in Broadstairs. Joel's Bristow is the CEO of Surfers Against Sewage. Water companies are polluting our waterways with a devastating impact, ecological impact and on human health, and this has got to stop. We want the regulator and the government to hold the water companies to account. So we need them to enforce the law and we need to prioritize them and nature-based solutions because we need to clean this stuff up quickly. We want to see an end to sewage pollution in the places that we swim and surf and in high priority nature sites by 2030 at the very latest. You mentioned just now some of the impacts, obviously it's having ecological impacts, environmental impacts. As a surfer as somebody that uses the waterways, what impact does it have on your health? Yeah, so quite literally it makes us sick, right? So frequently I get ear infections or throat infections. So like sore ears, sore throat, sore nose, but it can be sick, it can be vomit, it can have diarrhea. Last year I had like rashes all around my midrift. So in some way we're ingesting sewage from the water, right, and other toxins too. But we're taking that on board and it's making people sick. Sometimes people seriously sick. We published a report last year in 2023 and that had all sorts of health cases, nasty cases that people have got. But we had about 2,000 people contact us directly to say they got sick from going in the water. And what was really surprising about that is 60% of the people who contacted us were swimming or surfing in what's known as excellent bathing water. So it's meant to be some of our cleanest, yet people are still getting sick from it. So this just isn't right. What do you think that we'll have as well? Obviously we're coming into the summer where a lot more people will be using our waterways. People will also be thinking about travelling from abroad to England to use some of our beautiful coastal spaces. What impact is this going to have on tourism trade? So we don't want it to have an impact on tourism trade. Of course, we have got some of the most beautiful beaches and places to swim and surf and rivers in the world. You know, we're really, really proud of our heritage and we don't want people to stop using them, right? We want people to come and enjoy them, but we want people to go into the water informed. So we have an app. It's called the Safer Season Rivers Service. Hit that app. It'll tell you where you're about to go for a swim or a surf. It'll tell you what the water quality is like and where there's a pollution alert in place. If there's no pollution alert in place, go in. Enjoy it. It's good for your mental health. It's good for your physical health. You come to England. Enjoy other spaces. Come to this country. Just enjoy our spaces. But if there is a pollution alert in place on the app, then don't go in, right? You're risking your health. And you're going to make a choice really then between swallowing sewage or not having a swim. And that is wrong. In 2024, we should not be in this situation. We should have the infrastructure that keeps these places and these people safe. It comes as figures show swale cliff between Whitstable and Hermbay was the worst affected area for sewage spills in Kent last year. Waste was pumped into the water on average once every three days. Now it's thought significant archaeological finds could be buried in land near Maidstone where there are plans for 5,000 homes. A local expert says the farmland in Lenin was significant in the Iron Age, but it's also thought Roman and Saxon activity could have happened there. The area is included in the local authorities' most recent local plan. Elsewhere plans for a new cafe, a deal castle have been dropped following concerns about road safety. English heritage wanted to convert a disuse building in the captain's gardens, which is just over the road from the council. But they've decided it would be too expensive to install a pedestrian crossing and traffic calming measures. Now we're being urged to look out for Asian hornets ahead of the summer season. While they're not a threat to humans, they do prey on pollinators, which can have a huge impact on our food security. Last year, there was a record number of sightings in the UK, and since the start of the year, there have already been seven in Kent. Well, Sue Knights is from the Kent Beekeepers Association. She's previously spoken to our sister radio station, KMFM. Whilst this is being led by beekeepers is not actually a beekeeper issue. It is a countrywide issue because ultimately pollinators are responsible for our food sources and without pollinators, we will not have food sources. And you can report any sightings through the Asian Hornet app or online. And a condoning of bees have been rescued after settling on a bin in Maidstone. Experts were called to get the swarm in Bower Street under control, hoping to find a hive at a local farm and produce honey, which could be sold for charity. Ken's online sport. There are calls for two Kent MPs to do what they can to ensure fair football governance for their local communities. Chatham and Ellsworth's Tracy Crouch and Damian Collins, who represents Folkestone and Hive, are going to be part of a committee looking at the football governance bill line by line. They'll be considering issues like FA Cup replays and the financial flow within the game. Well, Noel Cooper is CEO of Fair Game, a group calling for the even distribution of funds between leagues. We're basically after creating a fair of future football, and that means doing very simple things like trying to make sure that this new regulator is properly independent, that there is proper financial flow that goes down to the pyramid. And what does that mean? That means for the massive amount of money that exists in football in the distribution dilts, we're 3.19 billion pounds that actually that goes down to some of the more lower league clubs and the grassroot clubs to really try and make them feel part of the system and part of that community at the moment. The club is perhaps a massive and it just is basically ignoring a lot of the clubs in Kent and in other counties as well. Then what we're moving towards is because these gaps are getting wider. This cherished pyramid that we all talk about is crumbling. It's becoming increasingly difficult for clubs to survive. Let's just look at that the amount that we're talking about for a few thousand pounds that a Premier League club gets. A club in a national league gets 57 pence and a club in a national league south gets 14 pence. So for clubs in our county in Kent, 57 pence, that's what absolutely United get while club in the Premier League gets a thousand pounds. The lights amazed them united in Tumbitch Angels, they're just getting 14 pence. So to compete, to actually progress up the pyramid as it is, I mean whether it is a pyramid, I don't know anymore, but it becomes almost impossible and when it goes wrong, those clubs really struggle. They're having to overspend and it means that we're left with so many clubs at risk. In the press release you mentioned as well that there are some Kent MPs that have an opportunity here to do something about the financial flow of the game. What can you tell me about it? So the big thing, the big call right now is the future of football in this entire country rests on just 17 MPs. That's what it's come down to. That's the fair of future that we want to see. Two of those MPs are from Kent, they are Damian Collins and Tracy Crouch. So the call from fair game and the clubs in Kent, the members of fair game, this is your moment. This is your moment to be a hero. This is your moment to make sure that an independent regulator is actually independent, that the financial flow benefits the clubs and communities at the lower end of the pyramid. Clubs like Ebbsleet and Tumbridge and Maystone because at the moment the way the bill's written it, as it stands, it doesn't. So those 17 MPs and to Tracy and to Damian be those heroes because that's what we can and that's what we need right now. And that's the call from fair game and the clubs of fair game. Oh, there was chatting to Kate who's also been speaking to the chief exec of one of those clubs calling for more money from the pot. Damian Irvine is the chief exec of Ebbsleet United. First point of call and our supporters expectations is to put a first team on the pitch in men's and women's football and and do our best. That's always been the driving motivation from football supporters. But where that the financial impact really hurts and really inhibits our ability to do what we really, really want to do is in the community. It's with our community programs. It's it's boys and girls junior football. It's it's the ability to support financially other community initiatives like walking football. We can't do that. We've got a good support as trust here, which, which, you know, does help. These are these more diverse and community centric areas of our club. But with the lack of central funding it just inhibits our ability to really be a community focus. I mean, we're a football club like mates and like others in Kent who during during COVID, we're opening our doors for testing centres and for, you know, we have memory cafes here for local local charities and all sorts of things. We run food banks. That's where it really pinches and where your inability to be a good club in that aspect really hurts. Same with football and former Chatham town boss, Scott Lindsey has led Crawley to promotion to league one. They be crude to nil in the league to play a final at Wembley yesterday and he's been telling Sky Sports News. His players have been incredible. I put a lot of information into them and they've taken on that information and executed it brilliantly all season. You know, we were unbelievable in the in the semi finals against a good M. K. Don's team. And we turned up today. I thought it was outstanding in the game today. And in tennis, Ken Semarajikanu has pulled out of the French Open. She was due to take part in qualifying matches, which start today, but it's understood the 21 year old from Orpington wants to spend more time training for the cross court season. Well, that's all from us for today. Thanks ever so much for listening. Don't forget you can follow us on Facebook, X Instagram, TikTok and threads. Plus, you can get details on the top stories, direct your email each morning via the briefing to sign up to that. Just head to Kent online. .co.uk. News you can trust. This is the Kent Online Podcast. (dramatic music)
