North Kent Council: Medway Is 55% of It, 81 Seats

Medway Council will be abolished on 1 April 2028 and replaced by a new council called North Kent, covering Medway, Dartford and Gravesham. Residents get their first chance to question the leader and chief executive about it in Strood on Thursday 1 October.

The council confirmed the meeting on Tuesday. The detail below comes from the government’s own decision and implementation letters, which carry a good deal that the press releases did not.

What the government actually decided

The Secretary of State, Steve Reed, wrote to Kent and Medway’s council leaders on 16 July 2026 setting out his choice. His decision letter picks the four unitary proposal put forward by Dover, Swale and Thanet district councils, and abolishes every existing council in the county.

Medway goes into the northern one, with Dartford and Gravesham. A follow-up implementation letter to chief executives, published on 4 August, names it and sizes it:

• the legal name is North Kent
• it will have 81 councillors for all three boroughs. Medway on its own currently elects 59, according to the council’s member index
• elections are in May 2027. The order will replace any scheduled local elections that month with elections to the new councils, and sitting councillors will have their terms extended
• new councillors will serve most of their first year on a “shadow” council before the new authority takes over on 1 April 2028
• the government is giving £900,000 per new unitary for transition costs, a total of £3.6m across Kent and Medway, plus up to £150,000 each for leadership capacity in children’s services, adult social care and public health
• the Local Government Boundary Commission for England will run full electoral reviews of all four new councils before the following elections, so May 2027 is fought on interim wards drawn from existing ones

None of it is law yet. A Structural Changes Order has to clear Parliament first, and the government said in August it expected to share a draft in September.

Medway is the biggest part of the new council by a distance

Cllr Vince Maple, the leader of Medway Council, said in July that “the current Medway Council footprint will be more than 50 per cent of the population of the new council”. The ONS mid-2025 population estimates put a number on it.

Medway has 292,697 residents, Dartford 126,297 and Gravesham 111,221. That is 530,215 in total. Medway is 55 per cent of the new council, Dartford 24 per cent and Gravesham 21 per cent.

The government’s implementation letter builds that weight into the transition. On the Joint Committee that will steer the creation of North Kent Council, half the members are to be Medway councillors and the other half split between Kent County Council and the two boroughs. The chair must be a Medway member, and the deputy chair must not be. Medway Council’s head of paid service is also named as deputy leader of the single implementation team for the whole county.

The reason a five-council model was rejected: it would have split Medway

The decision letter runs through why the other proposals lost, and one line matters locally. A five unitary option “could provide a model for closer service delivery”, the Secretary of State wrote. He did not judge that benefit to outweigh the greater financial and transition risk, “particularly as it would split the existing unitary council of Medway”.

A single county-wide unitary was ruled out outright. At over 1.9 million people it would have been by far the biggest council in the country, well past the 500,000 “guiding principle” in the government’s original invitation. The letter is careful to say 500,000 has “always remained a guiding principle, not a fixed threshold”, because two of the four new Kent councils will fall below it.

Medway’s own leader called the decision poor

Medway did not get what it asked for. The council had argued for four unitary councils, but on different boundaries. Responding on 16 July, Cllr Maple said the chosen option “represents a poor decision and has missed a once-in-a-generation opportunity to be bold and shape services around communities and the way people live, work and travel today”.

He named the places he thinks are left stranded: “Places like Walderslade and Faversham will be stuck with the same problems and confused geographies created by previous processes over the past 50 years.” He also said he would be seeking further clarification from the Secretary of State on the assessment process used to reach the decision.

At the same time, Kent and Medway’s leaders issued a joint statement saying “not one of our services will change overnight” and that residents would still be dealing with the same council staff.

The 1 October meeting

Medway Matters Live is at Strood Sports Centre, Watling Street, ME2 3JQ.

• Doors and service stalls: 6pm to 7pm
• Main event: 7pm to 8.45pm
• Date: Thursday 1 October 2026
• Cost: free, but you must book. The council is taking bookings through Eventbrite

Cllr Maple and chief executive Richard Hicks will speak on the council’s plans and on reorganisation, then take questions in a panel hosted by the former BBC South East journalist Rob Smith. The council asks anyone needing accessibility support, including British Sign Language, to email communications@medway.gov.uk in advance.

This is the sixth Medway Matters Live. The last was at the Rochester Corn Exchange on 6 May 2026, and recordings of earlier events are on the council’s page.

What it means for you

• Nothing changes to your services yet. Medway Council keeps running bins, schools, social care and planning until 31 March 2028. Your bin collection days and council tax bands are unaffected for now
• Your next local election is May 2027, and it will not be for Medway Council. It will be for North Kent Council, and whoever you elect sits on a shadow authority first
• Representation thins out. Medway alone elects 59 councillors today. The new council covering three boroughs and 530,215 people will have 81
• The ward you vote in will probably change, because interim boundaries are being drawn now from existing wards, divisions and parishes, and the councils had to send their suggestions to the government by 17 August
• If you want to ask about any of it, 1 October is the moment, and you need to book a free ticket first

We will follow the Structural Changes Order when the draft is published. For planning decisions in the meantime, see our Medway planning applications page.