Catch up on the latest political news from across Kent with Sofia Akin, joined by Conservative Claire Pearsall from Sevenoaks and Green Councillor Mark Hood from Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council.
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00:00 Hello and welcome to the Kent Politics Show live on KMTV. I'm Sophia Akin and coming up
00:28 on tonight's show, hundreds of former sub-postmasters finally meeting justice as the government
00:34 will quash the convictions of those wrongly convicted and we hear the stories of Kent
00:39 victims. Plus Sevenoaks residents are divided as the council plans to build more than 10,000
00:44 new homes to meet targets, some of which could be on Greenbelt land. And the Angel Centre
00:50 leisure centre in Tunbridge will be torn down as council bosses say it's losing more than
00:55 £200,000 a month. But where will its replacement be? But first tonight, this week we've heard
01:01 the stories from former sub-postmasters from Kent accused of stealing thousands of pounds
01:06 in the post office scandal. More than 700 branch managers across the UK were given criminal
01:11 convictions after faulty accounting software used on business computers made it appear
01:17 money was missing from their shops. This week we've seen the former CEO Paula Venels handing
01:22 in her CBE after millions signed a petition calling on it. The government will now quash
01:27 the convictions for those wrongly convicted due to the Horizon scandal, with new laws
01:31 being brought forward by the government. We can now hear from a former Sevenoaks sub-postmaster
01:37 who was wrongly accused of stealing thousands from his branch. Dave Graham pleaded guilty
01:41 in 2011 to stealing £68,000. He felt he had no other choice and spent 10 years being shamed
01:49 by the local community. My daughters only actually found out just before the court of
01:56 appeal about it because I'd never spoken about it to them. You know, they've got, you know,
02:03 growing up, they've got enough on the plate without worrying about what I'm going through.
02:07 Because to me, when I received my, which I actually received the other two days ago,
02:12 my latest DBS check, and for that to come back as non, you know, no recorded charges,
02:22 convictions, and to have that piece of paper with that written on it, it was such a buzz.
02:30 Tonight we're joined with Conservative Claire Pearsall from Sevenoaks and Green councillor
02:34 Mark Hood from Tunbridge and Moorlink Borough Council. Welcome to you both. So we just heard
02:40 there the story of Dave, one of hundreds who were wrongly convicted in the post office
02:45 scandal. What he said there was his convictions were quashed in 2021. But for many who have
02:52 served time during the scandal, they feel that that's just not good enough. So Claire,
02:57 you're also from Sevenoaks. I wanted to start with you. They can't get back that time they've
03:02 served, can they? So what's your kind of reaction to everything that's really come to light
03:06 even more so these past couple of weeks? It's horrendous. I think there is not one person
03:12 who can say this is a great part of the United Kingdom's history. It is an absolute travesty
03:18 that these people have gone through this. Lives have been ruined. Money has been lost.
03:23 People have gone bankrupt. People have committed suicide, very sadly, and indeed lost family
03:27 members. As we just heard from that particular gentleman, his family didn't know about it.
03:32 To not have your family involved and for a community to shun you because they think you're
03:37 a thief. How can you ever get recompense for something as awful as that? And it's a service
03:42 we all rely on so much, the post office, isn't it? So for many members of the public, they
03:47 feel betrayed to see all this coming to light as well. We've seen the government saying
03:53 that they will quash the convictions of those wrongly convicted and we'll see some £75,000
04:01 to those who are part of the original campaigners and £600,000 for all those wrongly convicted.
04:05 Mark, do you think that's enough, that compensation? Is it enough justice for those victims? I
04:12 think Claire's hit the nail on the head really. How can you compensate somebody who's been
04:17 locked away, has been shamed? When you lose the respect of your neighbours and your friends,
04:26 how do you come out from that? It's crazy to have to own up to £68,000, to pay £68,000
04:37 that you haven't actually spent, that you haven't stolen. I can't imagine what an ordeal.
04:46 But where does the buck lie? I think that's a really important point. I think for the
04:52 majority of people it's not actually physically about the money, it is about seeing justice
04:57 being done for those who were in charge of this and allowed it to happen. And until such
05:02 times as we get to hear during the inquiry the testimonies of those individual people
05:07 and to find out who knew what and when, there isn't really going to be any line drawn under
05:11 it. So I'm not sure it's the money so much, it's justice and it's truth. And I wanted
05:16 to bring up, I mean I said before, Post Office is such an integral part of the community.
05:21 We saw in Tunbridge, they lost the Post Office. There is now a replacement Post Office. But
05:27 I wanted to ask you, we saw how, even more so, how integral the Post Office is to the
05:32 community. What sort of reaction do you think this is going to have? People are saying they're
05:37 going to start boycotting the Post Office. Well I certainly hope not because we've got
05:41 a new Post Office, new Postmasters taken over and we're really delighted to see that it
05:47 happened after over a year. And we wish them all the best. The last thing they need is
05:52 a boycott. I mean, they've got a waste-free shop as part of the business. But there's
05:59 something fundamentally wrong with the Post Office. There's something fundamentally wrong
06:03 with their model, their franchising model, where they require their franchisees to have
06:08 a separate business to supplement it. They don't really give them support. They don't
06:12 have their own branches anymore. And I find that model very odd. They seem to have abandoned
06:17 the people who were looking for premises. They didn't give them the support they needed.
06:21 And I don't really understand why the Post Office don't run branches themselves. Why
06:26 do they always have to use a franchisee? Well, we've got a statement from the Post Office
06:30 saying they are doing all they can to right the wrongs of the past as far as that is possible.
06:35 And said that they are working with the government in providing full, fair and final compensation
06:40 for the people affected. We've seen this independent inquiry launched so far. But really, we've
06:47 seen all of this. This isn't new knowledge. It's just really come to light these past
06:52 couple of weeks with the ITV drama that's been on the TV. So why do you think it's almost
06:57 this way has been a way that people have really become more outraged about the situation when
07:03 it's nothing new? Do we need to be changing the way that we're communicating with members
07:07 of the public? I think the real difficulty is that when this story first came up some
07:12 years ago, it was quite dry, quite technical. It is about IT systems. It doesn't really
07:18 give you much. It's kind of a bit dull in most people's eyes. It takes an ITV drama
07:24 to show you the emotions of individuals that were involved. And I think what it does show
07:30 and what it highlights enormously is that the press has a large part to play in this.
07:35 And newspapers have cut down on their investigative journalism. They don't have the coverage.
07:39 They don't have the people to go out there and do these stories long term. And it's only
07:44 publications like Private Eye or Computer Weekly who had the ability to do that and
07:48 have doggedly not let it go for decades. So I think, yes, there needs to be a way of communicating.
07:55 But I think also the general public just aren't open to stories that are seemingly quite dry
08:00 on the surface. And we've also seen the CEO at the time, Paula
08:05 Venels, handing in her CBE after more than a million signed a petition calling on her
08:10 to do this. But many people we've spoken to, many former sub-postmasters in Kent, such
08:15 as Dave, who we heard from in Sevenoaks, also a man from Ramsgate who we spoke to earlier
08:21 this week, who are saying that some people are calling for them actually, for Paula to
08:26 hand in her bonuses she received at the time. Is this going to become a constant thing?
08:31 Every time these events come back to light, people are going to be asked to hand in their
08:36 titles, hand in their money. Is that sustainable, to keep asking that of people, do you think,
08:41 Mark? Well, I think the CBE is odd. I think if you
08:47 are CEO of a large organisation, you get paid handsomely. They get paid huge amounts of
08:52 money. With that responsibility, you have to be expected to do the right thing. She
09:00 didn't do the right thing. She knew full well what was going on. When you had the investigators
09:08 going in there, second sight, they told her and the response of the post office and the
09:15 people in charge were to remove them from the investigation, which is shocking. So they
09:20 could have nipped it in the bud much earlier. I think she should be hauled in front of a
09:23 court. I think that when things go wrong in this manner, where people have gone to prison
09:28 and they've known about it, they knew full well that people had gone to prison and been
09:33 convicted wrongly and they didn't do anything about it. I think people need to be, in these
09:39 instances, I think that's right. If you are prepared to take that role, you have to behave
09:46 responsibly and they haven't. But this is for the inquiry to work out who
09:52 knew what and when. I don't disagree with you. If you are the chief executive, the buck
09:55 stops with you. But we need to understand what information was given, who had access
10:02 to that information and who perhaps wasn't telling the truth at the time. I think we
10:06 need to leave the inquiry to do that. As painful as this is, it isn't going to get dealt with
10:10 quickly just because we're all incredibly angry and quite rightly so. Handing back a
10:15 CBE, absolutely. The Forfeiture Committee are the only ones realistically and the King
10:20 who can take that away. But she has offered that back. Unfortunately, the government doesn't
10:24 really have a mechanism to get bonuses back off of companies. But the one thing I know
10:30 that they are looking at is perhaps something around the pension scheme because of part
10:36 of the state-owned nature of post office and part of the government's interest in it, is
10:41 that they can do something about it. So I'm hoping that that's what they'll do. But bonuses,
10:45 it's a really tricky question. I think we need to be very careful to not make knee-jerk
10:49 reactions to every single slight that we come across. Calling for people to be sacked, resigned,
10:57 have bonuses taken away, go to prison. I think, yes, in some respects, absolutely bank to
11:02 rights, but we ought to be a little bit careful because we could all find ourselves under
11:06 that kind of intrusion from the outside world for every perceived slight. So I think a little
11:12 calm head is needed. We don't have long now till the break, but at the time of the scandal
11:17 that was happening, we saw members of the community shunning these sub-postmasters,
11:21 now trying to support them. What do you think about that? The fact that they were kind of
11:25 condemning them at the time, not having faith in them, and now they're kind of on their
11:29 side. We don't have long to the break, but I wanted to quickly discuss that one. I think
11:33 the fact is we put a lot of faith in the justice system. And if people go through court and
11:39 they're found to be convicted, found to be guilty, people are going to be... Why would
11:43 you not believe it? I mean, I can't imagine what went through those people's minds when
11:47 every time they tapped those buttons, they found out they were even more indebted.
11:52 Thank you. It's time for our break now. Thanks for both of the discussions. See you after
11:55 this break.
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15:05 Hello and welcome back to the Kent Politics Show live on KMTV. Now,
15:13 Sevenoaks residents are divided at the council's plans to build more than 10,000
15:17 homes, some of which could be on Greenbelt land. Locals were asked to vote
15:21 on where houses should be built in the next 16 years as part of a public
15:25 consultation which ended yesterday, but it's gone far from smooth. The chairman
15:30 of Ainsford Parish Council has said the district council had pitted the district
15:34 against each other like the Hunger Games. Still with us is Sevenoaks
15:37 Conservative Claire Pearsall and Green Councillor from Tumbridge and
15:40 Morling, Borough Council Mark Hood. Mark, you laughed at those comments, I'd like
15:45 to go to you first. What do you think of his comparison of comparing it to the
15:49 Hunger Games? Quite a bold statement. It is, that's quite a striky statement. It
15:53 does, but it resonates as well because recently we had meetings of
15:59 the three separate groups of councillors, because we've got three different
16:02 planning committees in Tumbridge and Morling, and we can see it
16:07 happening here where, oh, you could put all the houses there, we could put all
16:11 the houses here, or we don't want any of the houses in our area. There
16:15 has to be a fair distribution of houses, but it has to take into
16:19 account where the greenbelt lies, where the area of outstanding natural
16:22 beauty is and other constraints. And boroughs like Tumbridge and Morling, we've
16:27 got 70% greenbelt. Claire's district, I think it's 93%. 93% is what I was going to say.
16:34 These councils have targets to meet and people are opposed to it being on
16:39 greenbelt land, but 93% of Sevenoaks is greenbelt. That's actually the third
16:43 highest proportion in England. So where else are they going to build the houses?
16:47 Well, this is the problem and you'll never find a more contentious subject
16:50 than planning when it comes to local communities. The Sevenoaks
16:56 District Council will have a really tough job identifying sites and putting
16:59 them forward because nobody's going to want any of them anywhere and they're
17:03 all going to suggest that somewhere else is better. So that's your first problem
17:07 and asking people to vote on putting things into the parish of another
17:12 neighbour I think is always going to cause these kind of issues. It's
17:16 important to stress that this is just a plan. You have to have a plan going
17:21 forward. This is not an open planning application. It's not as if they're going
17:26 to be built tomorrow. So I think those kind of nuances are always lost.
17:31 The emotion comes out. People don't want to see beautiful green space spoil and
17:35 I'm all for that. I live in the district. I live in that greenbelt land and it is
17:40 absolutely beautiful but I think that sometimes just because it's greenbelt if
17:44 it doesn't have a specific purpose then you should be able to look at it and see
17:49 how it could be used better.
17:51 And Mark, you've spoken with KMTV previously about
17:55 housing developments in Tunbridge. A couple of years ago actually you were
17:59 talking about Lower Haysden Lane. You were concerned about houses being built
18:04 there due to flooding in that area. So do you think that houses are being built in
18:08 the right places?
18:10 I don't think that was the right place. I still think that's a
18:13 mistake because there's issues with surface water flooding as well as
18:16 river water flooding there. I think you have to have a sustainable distribution
18:22 of properties, of houses. I think using the ground floor land first is
18:27 obviously really important. I don't live in the greenbelt. I live in an urban area.
18:31 I live in the middle of Tunbridge and we've got loads and loads of car parks in
18:35 the middle of Tunbridge that we could repurpose for housing and we could
18:39 regenerate our town so it works much better. You can do it sympathetic. You
18:44 don't have to have skyscrapers. You can have modern buildings
18:48 which are built at density that actually protect you from having to have the
18:53 urban sprawl out onto the countryside because we want to protect the
18:56 greenbelt as much as we can.
18:58 Yeah I think density is a really important
19:01 question and developers unfortunately want to build very large properties, four
19:05 and five bedroom. And certainly when I was on the District Council one of the
19:09 housing needs surveys that we commissioned said the need was
19:13 greatest for those looking at two and three bedroom properties. So you're
19:16 looking at smaller properties that either people can downsize, people can
19:20 get on the housing ladder and I think you need to look at the use of the space
19:23 that you have. Outside space is fantastic. Where I live in New Ash Green it is
19:27 based around the pedestrian. That's how it was built over 50 something years ago.
19:32 You always look at what green space you have but it is incredibly difficult. We
19:36 need more housing. That's the one thing everybody says we want more housing, just
19:39 not by me.
19:41 Yeah it seems to be the problem everyone raises, not in my
19:44 backyard as you were saying before. And also wanted to raise back on what we
19:51 were saying before about that they'd done a, it kind of all kicked off on a
19:56 Facebook, on a Sevenoaks Facebook group. And some were instead pushing people to
20:01 vote for the development of 2,500 homes which would include a school, medical
20:06 facilities near Ainsford and Farningham villages. What did you think of that one?
20:11 Was that a better idea would you say?
20:13 I think it's difficult to say. I mean the
20:16 Pedham Place which is that development is strategically well placed
20:21 for motorway links but I always am concerned that even though it says there
20:27 will be a doctor surgery there will be a school. Well when does that come in?
20:31 Is it going to be built straight away? What size is it going to be? Does it meet
20:35 the needs of the communities? And what about the other infrastructures?
20:39 Gas, electricity, solar panels, internet, those kind of things and that always
20:44 gets forgotten when you're looking at planning applications and when you're
20:48 looking at a local plan. But also because it's near the motorway that means that
20:52 people are more likely to drive. So are you going to have charging points, EV
20:57 charging points? Are you going to have enough parking spaces? Because we know
21:00 that second only to planning is parking for people to get angry about and if
21:05 you're not going to have the spaces and expect people to use the non-existent
21:09 public transport links then you're doomed to failure and that will always
21:12 be a white elephant. So if you can sort those problems it's not a bad location
21:17 that there could be better. I worry about the environmental impact of it but as I
21:23 say we do need to look at the housing needs in the district and where we can
21:27 put them. Two and a half thousand is hugely, hugely dense. Maybe you can look
21:33 at that to be scaled back. And for Ped and Place, somebody on the sort of
21:38 development team had said that they considered them to be in the most
21:42 suitable locations close to existing settlements, transport and services as
21:46 well and they've said where they've looked at using Greenbelt they focused
21:50 on land which is poorly performing and may already have been built on. I just
21:55 wanted to discuss as well, you were saying about the types of housing that
21:59 were needed and I guess it may be a concern for you as well in
22:04 Tunbridge. Is there enough affordable housing being built and for say younger
22:09 people, older people, sort of all types of needs, everyone needs a house
22:13 essentially. So are there the right types of housing being built? This is so
22:18 important. We had a housing need survey, a study rather, commissioned by the
22:22 council just before the last election and the results of that were quite
22:27 shocking actually because they came back and they told us that
22:30 actually affordable housing, any affordable housing, should be social
22:34 housing. So the idea of any other form of affordable housing,
22:39 shared ownership, that kind of thing, isn't going to cut it. We
22:43 actually need the Borough Council to set up its own
22:47 housing company because we own our own land in the middle
22:51 of Tunbridge and we should be
22:55 investing. So if we invest the money, we know we're going to get that
22:58 money back in rent and I know that other councils are doing a lot
23:02 of good work in that respect and a lot of them, Conservative councils
23:05 actually, are building social housing and we need to get on board. There's some
23:09 fantastic projects out there. There's one in Norwich, one in York, brilliant
23:14 work. It's a never-ending debate, housing, building the right housing. But I
23:18 just wanted to talk about one last topic as well before we finish. The Angel
23:23 Centre in Tunbridge will be demolished to pave the way for a new carbon-neutral
23:27 building, the council says. The decision was finalised this week after council
23:31 bosses said the centre loses £265,000 a year and after almost
23:36 3,000 signed a petition in preserving the miniature railway, it's been
23:39 confirmed this site will now not be considered for the leisure centre.
23:43 Something we covered on KMTV at the time. We spoke to the group who were really
23:47 fearful they were going to lose this miniature railway. These sorts of
23:51 things are really important to the community, aren't they? So how is it to
23:54 hear, Mark, that the railway will be staying in place? I know it's something
23:57 you opposed the Angel Centre originally, didn't you? I have been
24:02 campaigning to get the Angel Centre replaced for six or seven years because
24:08 it doesn't meet the requirements of my residents. It's light years
24:13 behind these facilities that we've got in Larkfield that the Leisure Trust runs.
24:16 I think that we can do much better. I think that there's a bigger piece of
24:21 work that can be done and that is to ascertain exactly what our council needs to do.
24:26 What it needs in terms of the property assets, so where we put our
24:30 headquarters, the offices, where we have our library in Tunbridge, whether we can
24:35 co-locate with KCC, have youth services in there, adult education as well and
24:40 a state-of-the-art new leisure centre. But it needs to be, this work should be
24:45 done now. Where would be the best place to build the Leisure Centre, if not near
24:49 the Miniature Railway where there was a pool there, where would be a better place
24:52 to build it, would you say, this new one? That image behind you there, right next
24:57 to it, that building, the Angel Centre, is surrounded by single-level
25:01 car parks. It's the most inefficient use of land I can imagine and there's no, we
25:06 can quite easily build a civic centre incorporating all those
25:10 aspects that I've listed and then once that's the Leisure's facilities and
25:14 community facilities in there are up and running, remove that or repurpose it, even
25:18 better, if we can repurpose the shell of it so there's not the carbon impact of
25:23 demolition, that'd be brilliant. But we need to have an open mind and residents
25:29 and most of all opposition councillors in Tunbridge and Warwick are
25:34 frustrated because we haven't got enough detail at the moment and we think that
25:37 the options are being limited. I'm sure they're working on the detail, I'm sure
25:42 hopefully we'll hear more as we go along and Leisure Centre is such an integral
25:46 part of the community, aren't they Claire? We saw one being closed in
25:51 Severn Oaks last year after the operator went insolvent and locals were
25:56 devastated, people take their children there, it's great for health and
25:59 well-being, so what would you say about this and sort of relating it to
26:03 Severn Oaks and your own experience with the Leisure Centre there?
26:06 How important are Leisure Centres? Hugely, hugely, hugely important and what I
26:10 would say to Tunbridge and Malling is to contact people, get them interested, get
26:16 them involved in designing what it is that they want for their leisure
26:19 facilities because that is the only way you will find out what classes people
26:23 want, what times are good for people, what they will actually use and then you can
26:28 look at other groups that may want to rent out space to get an
26:31 additional income but look at the schools, look at older people's groups,
26:35 look at the local community as a whole because they are your best resource when
26:39 it comes to this. Thank you both so much for joining us today, it's all we've got
26:42 time for I'm afraid. That's all from us here at the Kent Politics Show, thanks to
26:47 our guests tonight for coming into the studio, we'll be back straight after the break
26:50 with Kent Tonight, see you soon.
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