on Monday, June 10th coming up today. We've got updates on a number of fires that have broken out across the county. And we've got the story of a Kent couple who've gone viral after moving back in with their parents. But first, taking a look at our top story today. People living in a block of floods in Ashford say the energy system is making their bills much higher, then we'll see if we can get back to the city. And then when I called them, they couldn't get back to the city. It's been a great time to get back to the city and take a look at the story today. People living in a block of floods in Ashford say the energy system is making their bills much higher than they should be. Victoria Point is home to 200 apartments, which are all connected to a communal heat network linked to one central boiler. Well, I saw what I actually noticed was about six months ago when my bill shot up from like 18 pounds, like 50. And then when I called them, they couldn't give me an answer. I had to go down like many lines of like, can I speak to a manager, you know, that kind of thing until you got to the manager. Yeah, sorry, that was ginger my apologies. And it essentially came to that I was paying for other unpaid bills that weren't mine. And they told you that. Yeah, it was very, I didn't understand. I think it's somewhere in a contract, but obviously, you know, who reads terms of conditions. But yeah, obviously, I don't agree with it. It's not stated that when you move here. But apparently that's how ginger have always worked. My bill has originally gone pretty much from around 15 to 18 pounds to about 30 pound now on average. So after that, I kept checking. And now it's like averaging about 30 quid, which I think is stupid. I'm very, very sensible of what I use. So how it's gone up that much, I don't know. But I know, obviously, the service charge for the building's gone up. Obviously, the energy prices are going up. So I know my rent's going to go up. So I'm pretty sure that I'll end up having to move because everything's just going up without any. Well, without warning, really, I don't recall getting any emails or documentation about the energy prices going up. And do you regret moving here because of all of this? Or is it, you know, is it still a lovely place to be? It's just this is really causing the main issue. This place has many other issues. I like the location, you know, the people, but the building itself, sorry, the owners of the building and ginger have made it a horrible place to live. So how much do you say you pay about 30 pounds a month? Does that change in the winter? No, I don't tell them we're heating. So it's about the same. Yeah, because I think the hallways, I know someone's probably mentioned it before, the hallways here are so hot. It essentially warms your flat for you. And I like the cold as well. So for me, I don't need to turn it on. Which floor do you live on? A second floor, so I'm sort of in the middle. So you kind of get the middle ground of it all then? Yeah, I'm getting everyone's heating, so that's nice. So when you first moved in, I assume you didn't know anything about this new system that they're using? No, and I didn't really sort of think about asking. This is the first place I'd got on my own, so I didn't know what I should ask. Now I do. So would you like to see it happen now? You have to be saying that she would like to see more people talking about this in government. Because people don't know about it, do they? Obviously, it obviously can't be, but it feels illegal. So I feel like it should be spoken about more to shoot things up by the prices that they are, I think is ridiculous. I don't necessarily have the most fantastic job that pays a huge amount. So, you know, so when they keep up and in the prices by the amounts that they are, it's just not doable. Ginger, Energy, who run the system, admit for every three units of gas paid for to disappear into the atmosphere. Residents also have to pay to cover any missed bills by their neighbours, which the company says is standard practice. Kent Online News. A Kent woman who abused her baby so badly, he had to have both legs amputated, has been recalled to prison after breaching license conditions. Jodie Simpson is the biological mum of Tony Hudgel and was jailed in 2018. The 30-year-old was released last February. Despite a campaign to keep her locked up, it's understood she's now back behind bars after reportedly having a relationship with a convicted sex offender. A court has heard how a Ramsgate man tore a clump of hair from his partner's head after finding out he could have been exposed to COVID. Aaron Simpson flew into a rage when his victim told him she'd seen a friend who had been diagnosed with the illness, the 56-year-old, who's been living with his sister and Queen's Avenue since the attack pleaded guilty and will be sentenced in September. An abusive man from Hearne Bay, who attacked his ex-partner, has cried in court as he was sent to prison. Marty Baxter ignored a court order that prevented him from seeing her and turned up at her home in February this year and kicked her while she lay on the floor. A 29-year-old who lives in Station Road has been sentenced to 18 weeks behind bars. A tongue-bridge businessman has been fined following a pension fraud investigation. Former sports center director Lee Bartholomew from Lockside resorted to pay £15,000 for withholding information. The 45-year-old was also found to have not paid money into employee pension schemes, but the regulator will not prosecute. And a renewed appeal has gone out to help find a man missing from Hive. Jonathan Poole was last seen in the Reachfields area on May 30th. We've shared a picture of the 64-year-old at Kent Online. Kent Online News. Four fire engines have been called to a derelict secondary school in Chatham following a suspected arson attack. A blaze broke out at the former St John Fisher Catholic comprehensive on Ordnance Street just before three yesterday afternoon. My mum was hurt, but it's thought to have been started deliberately. It comes as three fire engines have been called to new Romney. After the roof of a building caught a light, the blaze started on Station Road just after half seven yesterday evening. Crews spent an hour tackling the flames. No one was hurt to add it's unclear what caused it. Meanwhile, a faulty fridge freezer is thought to have caused a fire in a garage in Maidstone. Crews were called to Flaxman Drive yesterday afternoon and spent more than two hours tackling the flames. There were no reports of injury. Kent Online News. An Ashford man who was pronounced clinically dead for eight minutes says his life was saved by two passers-by who gave him CPR. Brett Booth was walking along Beaver Lane on June 1st when he went into cardiac arrest. Two 20-year-olds who were driving past stopped and gave him chest compressions until an ambulance arrived. The 55-year-old is now recovering. He's thanked the brave young man who stopped to help him. Head to Kent Online to see video of rats scurrying around a play park in Canterbury. The footage was taken by a dad who'd taken his two-year-old daughter to Victorian Recreation Ground in Knights Avenue last Thursday. Council say rats are often attracted to parks because of litter and it's not an issue they're able to tackle. The murder of a man on Sheppy is set to feature on a new Channel 5 documentary. A killer makes a call. We'll explore the death of Gary Pocock who was killed while on holiday it lays down almost 11 years ago. The episode is one of six in the series which is streaming now. Kent Online News. The Kent Wildlife Trust is urging election candidates to make climate issues one of their top priorities. A national poll has found the majority of the public think the main parties aren't focusing enough on things like water pollution, loss of nature and sustainable farming. Charlotte Lewis is from the Kent branch of the charity. People are seeing the effect of climate and nature crises. They are seeing temperatures increasing. They are seeing extreme weather events increasing, flooding. It is impacting their own lives and they want that reflected with candidates as well. I haven't seen any particularly clear policies around nature, climate or the environment as yet. I think that does need to be addressed. Obviously we've been looking at a much more local level in Kent and we are starting to talk to candidates, starting to look at kind of hustings events and starting to encourage them to share their own thoughts and their own plans in Kent more specifically. Of course they have to juggle a lot and one of the other things that they have to juggle is house building and we know that's always a very contentious issue in Kent. Can the two be balanced nicely? Do you think can they live in harmony that we recover nature but also have the housing that people desperately need as well? I think there is opportunities to do that and I think it is about kind of building the right types of developments in the right places. I think we have seen time and time again where a desire for developments to be put in places that are havens for wildlife and that clearly doesn't make sense. There are kind of developers who are looking to be more sustainable, they are bringing more sustainable practices in. We have got kind of policies like biodiversity in a game which is certainly kind of almost forcing developers that haven't wanted to in a past to make sure that they deliver improved biodiversity ideally on the site where they're building or otherwise kind of nearby. There are some policies in place that are moving in the right direction. I'm not going to say it's an easy balance at all because it's not easy. But I think if there is a will to do it, then it certainly is possible. Do you think that it's easier to have climate and nature higher on the agenda now because of, as you said, people are experiencing changes to climate, then perhaps it was, say, a decade, two decades ago where perhaps you were really having to fight a really whole battle to get your voices heard. Is it now? I mean, sadly, it's much more of an issue. But does that mean that you are higher up the agenda for politicians, do you think? I would like to think so. I'm not necessarily sure that's true. I mean, I do understand, you know, there are competing kind of priorities for people and for politicians. But actually, you know, when it does come down to it, nature and climate can help with all of them. You know, nature and climate can help with health. It can help with the economy. It can help with obviously developments like you've already mentioned as well. You know, there's so many kind of areas that nature and climate can help with. And I think, hopefully, people care, they can see what's going on. They're then encouraging their own, you know, their politicians and their candidates to care more about it as well. I still think it is a bit of an uphill battle. It is, I guess it's a harder fix, isn't it? So maybe it makes it, it kind of brings it down the agenda for that reason. But it absolutely needs to be front and centre. And we haven't got along like you've said, you know, it's this government. The next government that comes in, they are going to be the ones that need to make those tough decisions. They're going to be the ones that put those policies in place. Or we're just going to see these temperatures keep on rising. These are extreme weather events keep coming in and we're going to start to see our costs rise as a result of that. You know, it's very short-termist, I think, to do nothing now because it is going to cost more in the long term. I did see some rather startling predictions about that temperature rise the other day. I think that they were talking about, I can't quite remember, I'm sure, you know, off the top of your head. Yeah, I mean, I think Kent County Councilor, their own kind of data is suggesting that temperatures in the summer could go up by as much as five to six degrees. And, you know, it will be higher rainfall and it will be higher droughts at times as well. So we'll get this kind of constant mix of increasing temperatures, no rain, to kind of loads of rain and floods. So, you know, it is scary. You know, even in the winter, we'll see the same. So we will see those temperatures rise by as much as two to three degrees as well in Kent, specifically as Kent County Council. Yeah, and probably weather events that we've always normally seen on the television in other countries. You know, we know monsoon season or whatever with the heavy rains and now we're experiencing that ourselves. And it has taken long, has it really? No, I think being so close to Europe as well, you know, Kent, we've got that mix of being really close to Europe and really close to London. And that means we kind of almost get the worst of all worlds, really. You know, we get those increasing temperatures and then we also get kind of some of that pollution and stuff coming into. So, So as well as lobbying candidates, you do have a key message as well for voters when it comes to what they do on July the 4th. What is your message? Yeah, absolutely. So we're asking kind of people across Kent to vote wild. So we really want people to consider nature as part of their vote. You know, we're keen that the Garden of England is brought back to wild life. Kent Online News. Residents of a village between Ashford and Canterbury fear their green belts could become a concrete jungle after land was put forward for new homes. A number of fields surrounding Chillam have been included in the Council's local plan. If the sites are deemed suitable, it could open the door for developers to build hundreds of properties. Locals have now launched a Save Our Village campaign. Residents have slammed plans to build a BMX track just meters away from houses in Folkston. The proposals have been put forward by Folkston Academy, which would include a 480-meter-long trail split into two loops and a bike shed. But people living along Grasme Gardens are worried about noise. A seafood restaurant in Tundbridge Wells is still on the market 17 years after it was initially listed. Sakey's Bar and Kitchen in Mount Efrem was first put up for sale in 2017, but its owner says no one has come forward with an offer that has tempted him to give it up. The three-story building is believed to date from the 19th century. It's now up for 1.5 million pounds, and despite being up for sale, it's currently operating as usual. A bar in Rochester High Street has been given permission to make its temporary outdoor shelter permanent. The city wall first put up the shelter as part of their outdoor seating area during COVID when planning rules were relaxed to help businesses enable social distancing. They've since been told to take it down as they don't fit in with the character of the street, but have now been allowed to stay following a retrospective application to council. A new cafe at a closed-off 18th century Kent Fort is expected to open to the public within weeks. The development at the Welcome Center at the Citadel in Dover is the first phase of a 100 million pound revamp to turn it into a tourist and business site. The cafe will be operated by the same couple who run Remsky's Sweet Shop in the town. An independent coffee shop chain has taken over a former cost store in Maidstone. The real eating company has opened a new branch on King Street. Bossa say they're hoping to compete with nearby Starbucks. Kent Online News. Shop owners are welcoming a decision to reopen a labor in Ashford after losing trade when customers were banned from parking there. Yellow Lions were painted outside Savers News Agents and Merino's Fish Bar on Fabbishan Road in January 2022 to stop people blocking access for buses. Science warning drivers not the park there have been removed and businesses have been told no one will be fined for using it. A disabled woman from Maidstone who hasn't had her bins collected in a month says she's now drowning in a sea of sacks. Barbara Quick is registered for assisted collections, but she hasn't had her bins emptied since May the 3rd. It's the latest in a string of issues with Suez who took over waste services in Maidstone, Ashford and Swale earlier this year. They say they're working hard to rectify all issues. A restaurant in Ailesford High Street has reopened following an £80,000 makeover. The Hengist has been completely refurbished after closing down at the end of last year. Kieran Corey Davidson is the new owner. When we took the Hengist on back sort of in April time, we decided to, you know, refurbish mainly upstairs. Put new carpets down, also painted, added a lot of the quirky kind of animal heads, the zebras, and then we added a lot of the floral kind of theme. So we've done like the flowers kind of outside the building, inside the building. The rainforest room obviously is where a lot of the kind of money went and also our feature wall with the LED sign. And we also painted obviously a lot of the building just to give it a fresh kind of new look. When we first obviously viewed the building, it was very kind of purple dated ten years ago. That might have been in fashion. So we tried to remove a lot of the purple and add more kind of colours. The carpets just have really, really dated and tired. So yeah, we kind of went with just a new fresh look really. And it kind of made it a bit more modern, but it still kept the original features like the beams and the exposed brickwork. And just, yeah, just added more colour really. I've always been in this industry for as long as I can remember really. And I just wanted a place where people know that they can harm and they can have like that London feel, but local. So they don't have to travel by train, they can just walk home or they can get a taxi. The idea is that they have that London feel on their doorstep. We're lucky that we have got a lot of cheerleaders that actually either followed me from other places or they're just people that want the hangars to work. You know, it obviously had a lot of floors before when it closed. And it was important for us to make sure we connect with the locals and let them know that we are going to be good neighbours. We're here to like for the long run and we want to make it work. So, yeah, we've had lots of positive feedback people from the soft launch from even opening people really compared to the food and the cocktails. And I think that's what I want people to, when they walk in, to have that surprise kind of excitement, you know, like when we've been the food over, it's like, wow, the foods are really good. And the cocktails, you know, have that excitement and surprise. Oh, wow, I didn't expect that, you know, and that's kind of how I like to treat like our customers. Kent Online News. A Kent couple have gone viral after they posted a clip on social media about how hard it's been for them to get on the property ladder. After renting in London, Beck and Sam Bartley moved back to Hearne Bay with Beck's parents so they could save a deposit for a home of their own. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] obviously we'll never be able to do what we can, we'd be like to do really, but yeah, as long as we raise as much as we can to help them, that sort of matters really. - Absolutely, and Ollie, what was that like for you, having to go through that, you know, obviously, with your brother, you and your family had kind of, not got through it, obviously, it takes a lot out of your lives, but then to have to go through it again, I suppose, when you found out about your own diagnosis. - Yeah, definitely, I mean, one time's bad enough, and then, like, say, getting it myself, it's just, you sort of go blimey, what happens now? Am I gonna be all right? And then, I guess after the first couple of weeks and start treatment, you sort of just have to crack on and still with it, really, but yeah, I wouldn't wish it on anyone, but we're both all right now, Tracy's fine. That's the main thing, really. - And I've got to ask then, obviously, this is charity football match, not your first one. What has sport meant to your lives and football in general about, you know, obviously the awful things that you've been through, but having that has kind of, I know lots of people like to just get lost in their sport and their football. - Yeah, I mean, like, these times have been tough going through all this sort of stuff, and football's just always been like a nice release. So, we're going to play once a week. We still play friends, I thought, and it's just, yeah, it's always made things easier, and it's nice to be able to combine the two together, play some football and, like I say, raise some money for a good cause. - So far, they go. Fund me has raised more than 1,000 pounds. - Ken's on line, sport. - Ken's Dina Asher Smith has won gold in the 100 metres of the European Athletics Championships. After a shaky start, the 28-year-old crossed the line in 10.99 seconds in the final in Rome, she's now looking ahead to the Paris Olympics. - We've got to piece these things together. We race so we can kind of do things, make mistakes, tidy it up and go again. That's why we don't just pop up in the Olympics as our first race of the season, you know, and happy to have won here, but also it's good to put together two very good, but very different performances, but they're both quick time. - Great Britain are up to third in the medal table after another gold for the women's half marathon team. Georgie Bell also got silver in the 1,500 metres, while Lizzie Bird was upgraded from third to second in the steeple chase after the winner was disqualified. And briefly, to cricket, Kent have lost to Middlesex in the T20 blast. Daniel Bell Drummond got half a century to help the Spitfires to a score of 173 at Canterbury yesterday. The visitors managed to beat that with four balls to spare, Kent are currently third in the South Group table. 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 your email each morning via the briefing. To sign up, just head to kentonline.co.uk.
