Methodology

Principles

• Transparent. Every score links to its data source and the date measured.
• Independent. KLN funds and produces the scorecard. No council, regulator, or sponsor edits it.
• Reproducible. Anyone with the same data could produce the same score.
• Disaggregated. We publish six metrics separately. We do NOT roll them into a single "best/worst" ranking — that would mislead.
• Refreshed quarterly. The fast-moving metrics (FOI response, refuse complaints) get fresh numbers every quarter; the slower ones (financial health) annually. First refresh completed 2026-07-03; next refresh expected October 2026.
• Politically attributed. Every score names the administration in office during the data period — not necessarily the administration in office today. See "Political attribution" below.
• Right of reply. Councils receive their preliminary scores in advance of publication and a 7-day window to flag factual errors or missing context.

Banding scale

Each metric is scored 0-100 and banded:

Tier applicability

Not every metric applies to every council. The two-tier structure in Kent divides remit between Kent County Council (which handles education, social care, transport, minerals/waste planning) and the 12 districts/boroughs (which handle refuse collection, planning, housing, local council tax). Medway is a unitary — it does the lot. Per-council pages show "N/A — not this tier's remit" for metrics that don't apply.

* KCC handles only minerals and waste planning, which is too narrow to score on its own; the bulk of planning sits with districts.
** School-system health is shown only on the county (KCC) and unitary (Medway) pages because that's the boundary at which the data aggregates cleanly. Districts have no school-system view of their own — schools in a district fall under the parent LA.

Political attribution

Council performance data lags. A score published today usually measures a period that ended months earlier — and in several Kent councils, control changed hands mid-period. Crediting or blaming the wrong administration would be both unfair and inaccurate. So every scored cell names the administration (and, where continuity makes it meaningful, the leader) in office during the data period, drawn from a maintained control history of all 14 Kent councils covering May 2021 to the present.

Where a data window straddles a change of control, the note says so explicitly and apportions the period. The clearest current example is Kent County Council, where Reform UK took control on 22 May 2025 after 28 years of Conservative administration: KCC data windows that span that date carry dual attribution — Conservative to May 2025, Reform UK from May 2025 — and budget-versus-delivery splits are noted where they matter (the 2025-26 budget was set by the outgoing Conservative administration in February 2025, while most of the year's delivery fell to Reform UK). Attribution is factual and neutral: it records who held office during the period measured, not who deserves credit or blame — readers can judge that for themselves.

Metric 1 — Refuse collection district + unitary

What it measures: reliability and quality of household waste collection services.

Components (proposed):

• Missed-bin reports per 100,000 collections (40%)
• Recycling rate vs national average (30%)
• Complaint resolution time (20%)
• Service consistency (missed-collection variance week to week) (10%)

Data sources: DEFRA WasteDataFlow returns (published quarterly), council customer-service KPI publications, KLN FOI requests where data is not publicly available.

Metric 2 — Complaints handling

What it measures: how well the council handles complaints from residents.

Components (proposed):

• LGSCO (Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman) upheld findings per 100,000 population (40%)
• Average council response time to formal complaints (30%)
• Formal-complaint volume trend (20%)
• Complaints policy publication compliance (10%)

Data sources: LGSCO annual decisions and council reports; council annual complaints reports; KLN FOI requests.

Metric 3 — FOI response

What it measures: compliance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, which mandates a 20-working-day response.

Components (proposed):

• Average response time vs 20-day statutory deadline (50%)
• Refusal/exemption rate (lower is better, subject to legitimacy) (30%)
• ICO decision-notice findings (20%)

Data sources: Council FOI disclosure logs where published; KLN's own FOI tracking; whatdotheyknow.com public archive; ICO published decisions.

Metric 4 — Financial health & budget discipline

What it measures: how well the council manages public money — day-to-day revenue spending against budget, major capital project delivery, reserves resilience, the external auditor's value-for-money judgment, and how its council tax positioning compares to peer councils.

Components (proposed):

• Revenue budget variance (25%) — net revenue spend vs approved budget in most recent completed FY. Penalises both overspend AND large underspend (poor forecasting).
• Capital programme delivery (20%) — aggregate cost variance plus timeline slippage across the council's published capital programme (regeneration schemes, new builds, major IT projects, leisure investments).
• Reserves & Section 114 risk (20%) — usable reserves as % of net revenue expenditure, combined with LGA financial resilience index banding.
• External auditor VfM judgment (15%) — annual external auditor's value-for-money opinion: significant weaknesses identified, qualified opinion, statutory recommendations.
• Council tax positioning (10%) — Band D council tax level for this tier vs national average for the same tier (county / unitary / district averaged separately).
• Council tax trajectory (10%) — compound annual growth rate of Band D council tax over 5 years vs national CAGR for the same tier.

What this picks up: SEND and adult social care overspend cycles; capital programme slippage (regeneration delays, leisure-centre rebuilds, IT transformation projects); council tax rises above national average without matching service delivery; external auditors flagging weaknesses.

What this deliberately does NOT pick up: major national infrastructure projects (Lower Thames Crossing, HS2, etc.) — those are National Highways / DfT / Network Rail, not council schemes. Where a council's engagement with such projects is worth measuring (statutory consultation responses, mitigation negotiations, planning objections), that sits in Planning + Transparency. Pension fund performance is also excluded; the Kent Local Government Pension Scheme is held by KCC for itself and the districts and is complex enough to need its own treatment.

Data sources: council Statements of Accounts (audited, published annually), external auditor annual reports, MHCLG council tax statistics, CIPFA financial resilience analysis, LGA Financial Resilience Index, council annual capital outturn reports.

Metric 5 — Transparency

What it measures: how openly the council publishes data about itself.

Components (proposed):

• Compliance with Local Government Transparency Code 2015 mandatory publications (40%)
• Councillor expenses and allowances publication detail (15%)
• Contract register publication detail (15%)
• Committee paper publication completeness and timeliness (15%)
• Open-data portal presence and update frequency (15%)

Data sources: direct inspection of each council's website on a fixed audit date each quarter; data.gov.uk index; KLN audit script.

Metric 6 — Planning district + unitary

What it measures: the planning service's performance against statutory targets.

Components (proposed):

• Major applications determined within 13 weeks vs national average (30%)
• Minor applications determined within 8 weeks vs national average (30%)
• Planning Inspectorate appeal-overturn rate (25%)
• Planning enforcement caseload trend (15%)

Data sources: MHCLG quarterly Planning Statistics, Planning Inspectorate appeal decisions, council enforcement returns.

Metric 7 — Education & children's services county + unitary

What it measures: the local authority's performance on the education and children's services it actually controls — not school-level outcomes (which are an Ofsted / DfE matter at the school or trust level, not the LA's). Applies to KCC and Medway only; districts/boroughs do not have this remit.

Components (proposed):

• SEND/EHCP statutory processing within 20 weeks vs national average (35%)
• SEND tribunal LA-loss rate — parent-won appeals against the LA's SEND decisions (25%)
• Children's services Ofsted ILACS judgements — sub-judgement average; see "How we score Ofsted judgements" below (25%)
• School transport delivery reliability (KCC: KSL contract performance; Medway: contracted operators) (15%)

How we score Ofsted judgements from April 2026

Until this year, Metrics 7 and 8 took their headline from Ofsted's overall effectiveness grade for a council's children's services — the single word (Outstanding, Good, Requires Improvement or Inadequate) awarded at each full ILACS inspection. From 1 April 2026, that grade no longer exists. Ofsted has removed the overall judgement from its inspections of local authority children's services and now publishes four separately graded judgements instead: the experiences and progress of children who need help and protection; of children in care; of care leavers; and the impact of leaders on social work practice. Each is still graded on the same four-point scale. Kent County Council's November 2025 inspection was the last in Kent to carry an overall grade; Medway's next inspection will be reported under the new format.

So that the scorecard stays comparable across councils and across time, we convert Ofsted's judgements to points and average them. Each of the four sub-judgements scores Outstanding = 4, Good = 3, Requires Improvement = 2, Inadequate = 1; Metric 7 takes the mean of all four. Metric 8, which focuses on safeguarding, takes the mean of the two safeguarding-relevant judgements — children who need help and protection, and the impact of leaders on practice — since these are where Ofsted assesses whether children at risk are identified and protected. For inspections carried out before April 2026 we apply exactly the same conversion to their sub-judgements rather than using the old overall grade, so old and new reports are scored on an identical basis. As a check, this method reproduces the overall grades Ofsted actually awarded at both Kent councils' most recent graded inspections (KCC: Good, November 2025; Medway: Good, July 2023).

Between full inspections, Ofsted's focused visits and monitoring visits are letters without grades. These do not change a council's M7/M8 score, but we report their findings alongside it as an indicator of direction of travel, and we say so explicitly when a score rests on an inspection that is several years old. Joint Ofsted/CQC Area SEND inspections use a different, three-category outcome scale that grades the whole local partnership (council and NHS together), so they feed the Metric 7 narrative rather than the number. As with every metric, the source reports are linked so readers can check our working.

Note: LADO and multi-agency safeguarding sit in Metric 8 — Safeguarding below. They're treated as their own metric so they don't get drowned in education numbers; the public-interest weight on safeguarding warrants standalone visibility.

What this metric deliberately does NOT include: school-level outcomes (GCSE/A-level results, Ofsted school inspection ratings, absence rates) — those sit with the school or the academy trust, not the LA. The LA's role is to plan, fund (for maintained schools), and arbitrate. We measure the LA on that, not on aggregate school performance.

Data sources: DfE annual SEND statistics, HM Courts & Tribunals SEND tribunal data, Ofsted ILACS published inspection reports, KCC/Medway children's services annual reports and audited financial statements, KLN FOI requests where data is not published.

Metric 8 — Safeguarding & LADO county + unitary

What it measures: the LA's statutory child safeguarding function — the Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO) pathway, multi-agency safeguarding hub (MASH) operations, and Section 47 child-protection enquiries. Applies to KCC and Medway only.

Components (proposed):

• LADO referral acknowledgement and investigation timeline vs Working Together to Safeguard Children 2023 statutory windows (35%)
• Multi-agency MASH timeliness — initial decision within 1 working day of referral (25%)
• Section 47 enquiry completion within 15 working days (20%)
• Independent safeguarding audit / Kent Safeguarding Children Multi-Agency Partnership (KSCMP) annual report findings (10%)
• Looked-after children (LAC) placement stability — % LAC with 3+ placements in year (lower better) (10%)

Why standalone: child safeguarding is the highest public-interest area of LA work; bundling it into "education" dilutes accountability. Reports and inspections of LADO operations and MASH are published separately; we score them separately.

Ofsted input: where this metric draws on ILACS judgements, it uses the mean of the two safeguarding-relevant sub-judgements — children who need help and protection, and the impact of leaders on practice — under the same conversion described in "How we score Ofsted judgements from April 2026" above.

Data sources: KSCMP annual reports, KCC and Medway children's services public reports, Ofsted ILACS reports (with LADO sections extracted), DfE LAC official statistics, KLN FOI requests.

School-system health separate area — county + unitary

What it measures: aggregate school-level performance across the LA's geographic area. Not a council score — schools are accountable through Ofsted and academy trusts, not the local authority. Provided because residents reasonably want to know how schools in their area are doing.

Shown on the KCC and Medway scorecard pages as a separate panel beneath the main metrics, clearly labelled and explained as measuring the school system rather than the council.

Components (proposed):

• Distribution of Ofsted ratings across LA-area schools — % Outstanding, Good, Requires Improvement, Inadequate
• GCSE Attainment 8 average vs national
• Overall pupil absence rate (authorised + unauthorised) vs national
• Post-16 progression — % of Year 11 leavers in sustained education/employment/training at 12 months

Data sources: DfE Performance Tables, Ofsted published inspection outcomes, DfE absence statistics, DfE "destinations of school leavers" statistics, all freely available.

District-level school-system data is not shown separately because school admission boundaries are LA-level (KCC), not district-level; aggregating only the schools physically inside a district would give a misleading view of "schools serving that district".

Metric 9 — Manifesto delivery (Trust score) all councils

What it measures: what the controlling party (or coalition) promised at the most recent election against what was actually delivered while in office. A public-accountability score designed to make explicit what residents otherwise have to track themselves.

Pledge categorisation: each manifesto commitment we track is placed in one of five buckets:

• KEPT — substantively delivered. Council can point to verifiable evidence the commitment is in place.
• PARTIAL — some progress but falls short of the original promise. Half-counts in the score.
• BROKEN — clear failure, abandoned without justifiable cause, or replaced with something contradictory.
• PENDING — in progress, not yet judgeable. Excluded from the denominator.
• OUT_OF_SCOPE — circumstances changed beyond the council's control (LGR dissolves authority, central-government funding withdrawn, etc.). Excluded from the denominator.

Score formula — two components averaged:

PledgeRatio = (KEPT × 1.0 + PARTIAL × 0.5) / (KEPT + PARTIAL + BROKEN)
IssueRatio  = (ALIGNED × 1.0 + MIXED × 0.5) / (ALIGNED + MIXED + COUNTERACTING)

TrustScore  = ((PledgeRatio + IssueRatio) / 2) × 100

The Trust score combines TWO accountability lenses:

• Pledge delivery — did the council do what it said it would do (from the manifesto)? Tracked in the per-council pledge tracker.
• Public-issues alignment — is the council taking actions that work in residents' direction on the top issues residents actually care about? Tracked in the per-council public-issues panel.

Both lenses matter. A council can deliver every pledge while counteracting residents on the issues they actually care about most; a council can also be broadly aligned with residents on big issues while failing on specific commitments. Combining the two prevents either side from gaming the score.

Banding follows the same A-F scale as other metrics. PENDING and OUT_OF_SCOPE pledges are excluded from the pledge ratio denominator; SILENT issues are excluded from the issue ratio denominator. If only one of pledges or issues is scoreable at a given refresh, the Trust score reflects that side alone with a transparency note.

What counts as a "pledge":

• Specific, verifiable commitments from the controlling party's manifesto at the most recent council election
• Pledges with a discrete deliverable (build X, open Y, freeze Z) — not vague aspirations ("improve services")
• Commitments within the council's actual statutory remit — not central-government policy
• For minority administrations or coalitions: each coalition partner's published manifesto counts, with overlap resolved editorially

Editorial process:

1. KLN editorial team curates each council's pledge list from the manifesto + election material
2. Each pledge gets a permalink page documenting source, date, KLN's judgment, and supporting evidence
3. Council leadership receives the preliminary pledge tracker 14 days before publication for factual correction (longer than the 7 days for data metrics because pledge-by-pledge judgment may need substantive reply)
4. Council's response is published verbatim alongside each pledge where they choose to provide one
5. Pledges are re-evaluated quarterly; status changes are logged

Why this metric is hard: "PARTIAL" vs "BROKEN" involves editorial judgment; coalitions mean reconciling multiple manifestos; LGR may make KCC's 2023 manifesto moot. The mitigation is transparency — every judgment is sourced, dated, and the council has right of reply on each.

Data sources: party manifestos (archived at publication), council press releases, council meeting minutes, official statistics, FOI responses, news reporting (KLN's own + cross-checked from credible sources).

Top public issues separate area — all councils + Kent-wide

What it shows: the top public issues residents actually face — Kent-wide and per council. Editorial assessment, not a metric score. We do not aggregate this into a number because the underlying judgement is qualitative; pretending otherwise would mislead.

Key principle: we judge on actions, not statements. A council that publicly opposes a policy while taking actions that enable it is not ALIGNED with residents on that issue — it is COUNTERACTING or MIXED, depending on the evidence. Pushback rhetoric without operational follow-through fails the alignment test. Conversely, a council can be ALIGNED on an issue it says little about, if its actions consistently track resident interest.

Each issue carries one of four alignment tags:

• 🟢 ALIGNED — council is taking actions that work in residents' direction. Statements may or may not match; what matters is the action record.
• 🟡 MIXED — some council action, falls short or sends mixed signals. Includes "statements oppose but actions go along."
• 🔴 COUNTERACTING — council actions take the opposite direction from residents, regardless of stated position.
• ⚫ SILENT — issue widely felt but neither statements nor actions reveal a clear council position.

We are explicit about COUNTERACTING because the existing "performance dashboard" genre implicitly assumes councils always want to respond to residents. In real Kent council politics, sometimes they don't — even when their rhetoric says otherwise. KLN names that.

How issues are selected:

• KLN editorial judgement based on: council complaints data + LGSCO findings + recurring KLN reader interest + public petitions + consultation response volumes + ongoing KLN investigation series.
• For Kent-wide: the top 5 issues that affect residents across multiple Kent councils.
• For each council: the top 3 issues specific to that council's residents.
• Issues are reviewed quarterly; lineup may change as new issues emerge or existing ones resolve.

Right of reply: councils may flag factual errors or provide their position on any listed issue. Position statements published verbatim. Same 14-day window as pledge tracker.

Things we deliberately do NOT measure (yet)

• Adult social care — county/unitary remit; CQC inspects; complex enough to need its own scorecard.
• Housing — split across district housing authority + housing associations; not a fair council-level metric without significant adjustment.
• Single "overall" ranking — combining unrelated metrics produces misleading league tables. We don't.
• School-level outcomes as a council score — covered separately in the "School-system health" panel on the KCC and Medway pages, with explicit disclaimer that this is not a council performance score.

These may be added in future versions if a robust methodology can be defined.

Right of reply process

1. Preliminary scores compiled internally each quarter.
2. Each council receives its preliminary card 7 working days before publication, by email to the chief executive's office, with the underlying data references.
3. The council may flag factual errors or missing context; we publish their response verbatim alongside the score where they choose to provide one.
4. If a council disputes a methodological choice (rather than a fact), we publish their position and ours.
5. Scores are published with the right-of-reply window evidenced.

Change log

• 2026-05-18 — initial DRAFT published; methodology under editorial review.
• 2026-05-18 — added Metric 7 (Education & children's services, county/unitary only); added tier-applicability table; refined Refuse + Planning as district/unitary-only metrics.
• 2026-05-18 — split LADO + safeguarding out of Education into standalone Metric 8 (Safeguarding & LADO, county/unitary). Re-weighted Education to 35/25/25/15 across 4 components. Added separate "School-system health" panel (KCC + Medway only) for aggregate school-level data, explicitly framed as not a council score. Added Metric 9 (Manifesto delivery / Trust score, all councils).
• 2026-05-18 — Metric 4 (Financial health) rewritten as "Financial health & budget discipline". Added explicit components for revenue budget variance, capital programme delivery, and council tax positioning vs national average. Now 6 components; sources to council Statements of Accounts + external auditor reports + MHCLG council tax statistics.
• 2026-05-18 — Methodology PUBLISHED. Editorial sign-off complete; methodology lifted from DRAFT to operative. Data collection now in progress for first quarterly refresh.
• 2026-05-18 — Initial pledge set published for Metric 9. Detailed pledge tracking for KCC (Reform UK 2025), Medway (Labour 2023), and Tunbridge Wells (Lib Dem 2026) populated from publicly-available manifesto material + KLN's existing investigation series. Remaining 11 districts have empty pledge trackers pending subsequent curation passes. 14-day right-of-reply window opens for the populated councils; closes 2026-06-06.
• 2026-05-18 — Pledge tracking extended to all 14 Kent councils. Maidstone (Green/LD/Independent coalition May 2024), Canterbury (Lab/LD May 2023), Thanet (Lab May 2023), Ashford (Independents/Greens May 2023), Tonbridge & Malling (Cons May 2023), Sevenoaks (Cons NOC since 2023), Dartford (Cons), Dover (Lab May 2023), Folkestone & Hythe (Greens/LD May 2023), Gravesham (Lab May 2023), and Swale (Lab/Ind/Green rainbow coalition May 2023) all populated. Every council now has a curated pledge list. 14-day right-of-reply window applies to all populated trackers; closes 2026-06-06.
• 2026-05-18 — Top Public Issues area added (separate from the 9 metrics). Kent-wide top 5 panel on the scorecard hub. Per-council top 3 panels on each council page. Four alignment tags: ALIGNED / MIXED / COUNTERACTING / SILENT. Editorial assessment, not a metric score. 14-day right-of-reply window applies; closes 2026-06-06.
• 2026-05-18 — "Actions, not statements" principle codified + applied. Public-issues alignment is judged on actions taken, not statements made. Statements opposing a policy while actions enable it = COUNTERACTING (not ALIGNED). Initial pledge set re-reviewed and adjusted: LGR (Kent-wide + KCC) recategorised to COUNTERACTING on grounds councils have engaged with LGR process + restructured internally + (per KLN investigation) spent £113m+ during a period when statutory authority was absent — actions enable despite oppositional rhetoric. 15 other ALIGNED tags downgraded to MIXED where alignment was statement-based without verified action evidence. ALIGNED reserved for cases with concrete action: Maidstone Rights of Nature adoption, Ashford Carbon Plan adoption, Medway + Sevenoaks council-tax positions maintained, Gravesham leaseholder-reform campaign that contributed to Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024, Gravesham homelessness partnership funding.
• 2026-05-18 — Trust score (Metric 9) combined formula. Metric 9 now averages the pledge-delivery ratio AND the public-issues alignment ratio. A council can no longer earn a high Trust score by delivering pledges while counteracting residents on the top public issues. Worked example: KCC scores 80 on pledges alone but ~33 on public-issues alignment (one COUNTERACTING on LGR, two MIXED), producing combined Trust score ~57 (Band C). Methodologically symmetric — both lenses weighted equally; SILENT/PENDING/OUT_OF_SCOPE items excluded from their respective denominators.
• 2026-07-03 — First quarterly refresh: scores populated. Data basis: Metric 1 from DEFRA's local-authority collected waste final results 2024-25 (published 31 Mar 2026) — recycling-rate and residual-waste components for the 13 collection authorities, remaining components pending. Metric 2 from LGSCO per-council performance statistics for 2025-26 and 2024-25; the 2025-26 annual letters are not yet issued (~July 2026), so figures may be revised; districts are scored on process indicators with an explicit small-numbers caveat, never on the raw uphold percentage alone. Metric 3 scored only for KCC and Folkestone & Hythe — the only two councils publishing usable FOI performance data; the other 12 cells remain pending, with notes recording each council's ICO decision-notice count (3-year window), WhatDoTheyKnow request volume and the non-publication finding itself. Metric 4 from council outturn reports, Statements of Accounts, Grant Thornton auditor's annual reports and MHCLG council tax statistics 2026-27, across all six components (mixed 2024/25 and 2025/26 outturn years, flagged per council; pre-audit figures flagged as provisional). Metric 5 from a fixed-date website audit of all 14 councils on 2026-07-03. Metric 6 from MHCLG planning statistics (Jan–Mar 2026 edition, 24-month designation-regime windows; enforcement component pending). Throughout, missing components are named in the cell note and re-weighted pro rata — never estimated.
• 2026-07-03 — Political attribution principle adopted. Every scored cell now names the administration in office during its data period, per a compiled control history of all 14 Kent councils (May 2021 → present). Data windows straddling a change of control carry dual attribution — most notably KCC, where windows spanning 22 May 2025 are attributed Conservative (to May 2025) / Reform UK (from May 2025). New "Political attribution" section added above.
• 2026-07-03 — Ofsted sub-judgement mapping for Metrics 7–8. From 1 April 2026 Ofsted no longer awards an overall effectiveness grade for local authority children's services. Metric 7 now averages the four graded sub-judgements (Outstanding = 4, Good = 3, Requires Improvement = 2, Inadequate = 1); Metric 8 averages the two safeguarding-relevant judgements. Applied retrospectively to pre-2026 inspections so old and new reports score on an identical basis; the mapping reproduces the overall grades actually awarded at KCC (Good, Nov 2025) and Medway (Good, Jul 2023), so the framework change causes no score discontinuity. Full explanation under Metric 7.
• 2026-07-06 — Right of reply opened on the first refresh. Each of the 14 councils received an itemised notice of every new or changed score, the basis for it, and the political attribution, with a single deadline of 17:00 on Friday 24 July 2026 (14 working days). Council responses were to be published verbatim alongside the affected cell.
• 2026-09-10 — First quarterly refresh PUBLISHED. No council responded within the right-of-reply window or since. Scores as itemised in the 6 July notices are now live on every council page, together with per-metric comparison tables on the hub, share cards, and cross-links between council pages and town news hubs. Late responses remain welcome and will be published verbatim. The October 2026 refresh will score Metric 3 (FOI) for all 14 councils from the standardised information request KLN sent every council in July and August 2026, and will re-check the Metric 2 figures against the LGSCO annual letters issued since July.
• 2026-09-10 — Corrections to published text. Metric 8 component 2 cited "Working Together 2018"; the statutory guidance in force is Working Together to Safeguard Children 2023 and the text now says so (no scoring effect). The Kent County Council and Kent-wide "Local Government Reorganisation" public-issue entries were re-based on KLN's published investigation record: the May wording that the Reform UK administration had made "push-back on LGR a public strategic priority" did not reflect the council's actions and has been replaced. The Medway children's-safeguarding public issue was re-based on the published Ofsted record and no longer refers to an individual case. A sweep of every other public-issue entry the same day produced: KCC pledge "push back on Government-imposed unitary structures" PARTIAL → BROKEN on the same record; Folkestone & Hythe "Princes Parade" MIXED → ALIGNED (the cancellation promised in 2023 has been carried out); Thanet housing corrected (council housing returned in-house on 1 October 2020 under the previous administration, not as a 2023 pledge; the 2023 pledge is 400 affordable homes over four years); and council-position wording updated where the administration described no longer exists — Swale (rainbow coalition dissolved December 2024, Labour minority since), Sevenoaks (Conservative minority since May 2025), Tonbridge & Malling (Conservative-led coalition, no overall control) and Maidstone (Green-led coalition, not "Lib Dem-led"). Trust scores (Metric 9) recompute automatically from these changes.