West Kent Local NewsYour trusted source for local news and community updates
Council decisions, crime, community life and the stories shaping day-to-day life across West Kent.

Sevenoaks District Council is proposing to freeze parking charges from April 2027 to help with the cost of living, while introducing a new weekend charge at the Gordon Road car park and phasing out cash payments, which now make up only a fraction of how people pay to park.

A 22-year-old has been jailed for three years after a violent disturbance in East Malling last October saw him threaten a woman with a wrench and knife, then return with a homemade flamethrower and an air rifle, shooting two people who tried to intervene.

Kent Police are seeking witnesses and dashcam footage after a car failed to stop for officers in Dunton Green, was allegedly involved in a collision with another vehicle in Lusted Road, and came to a halt in Hillfield Road, where the occupant ran off towards Chipstead Lakes.

Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust has slashed its audiology waiting list from 1,300 to 334 patients by posting pre-programmed hearing aids straight to people with mild to moderate hearing loss, cutting their wait from a peak of 13 months to under two weeks - a model NHS England and the RNID are now reviewing as a blueprint for the rest of the country.

Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council has approved £10,615 to commission a new five-year Air Quality Action Plan, replacing one that expires in 2027 - the same Wateringbury crossroads pollution hotspot at the centre of a long-running Green Belt housing fight remains the reason the council needs one at all.

Sevenoaks District Council will switch 45,000 households to wheelie bins and alternate-weekly collections from Monday 12 October, ending the green reusable sack scheme and collecting glass in with the rest of the recycling for the first time.

Kent Police are appealing for witnesses after five men broke through a brick wall to raid a business on the Branbridges Industrial Estate in East Peckham, stealing more than 100 specialist milling and drilling tools and over £5,000 of brass.

The Pantiles' free Boutique Christmas Market comes back for 22 dates between 13 November and Christmas Eve, with wooden chalets, a Bandstand entertainment programme and, new this year, a Nutcracker Trail with a £150 prize draw.

A 29-year-old Tonbridge man already serving a five-and-a-half-year prison sentence for running a cocaine supply network across west Kent has been ordered to pay back £215,623 of his criminal earnings, after a Proceeds of Crime Act hearing at Maidstone Crown Court.