Kentish Express Ashford & District
KCC leader to quit top job after 14 years in the hot seat
The Conservative leader of Kent County Council for the past 14 years confirmed earlier this month he was to step down from the role on October 17.
Few council leaders have much of a profile beyond the local areas they serve; if they do, it is usually because they are embroiled in some scandal.
Paul Carter is among the exceptions. As leader of the largest county council in the UK, having replaced Sir Sandy Bruce-Lockhart in 2005, he has been a doughty champion not just of Kent but of local government at a time when the sector has been under arguably the greatest financial pressure in decades.
There is some irony he has decided to call time just at the point when the government signalled an end to the austerity regime that’s caused so much grief for councils.
Perhaps it is not surprising that when asked what he feels was among his achievements, he singles out the fact KCC has managed to balance its books in the face of dwindling government grants.
His critics will dispute his claim he has done so without adversely impacting on frontline services but he is insistent he has squared the circle.
So, why now? “I want a bit of my life back. I have spent six - sometimes seven - days a week doing this job and before that as cabinet member for education. That is 22 years in public service. I don’t want to give up public service but I want to do three days a week rather than six.”
When it comes to asking what he considers to have been among his achievements, he cites the eight years in charge of education that gave him the greatest job satisfaction.
Alongside that he says despite presiding over a decade of a squeeze on public sector spending “we have made the money go a lot further and have been enormously successful in that... we are running with 40 per cent less money than we had seven or eight years ago”.
He says schemes like the Young Person’s Travel pass exemplified the council’s determination to go beyond just providing statutory services.
His response to the complaint that the costs have escalated to a point where some parents struggle to find the money is that “we don’t have to do it all”.
“We are putting £8m in which, if we did not, parents would have to find double or treble the amount they are paying.”
He cut his political teeth as a Maidstone borough councillor before being elected to KCC and was an admirer of Margaret Thatcher.
But he has been a pragmatic politician rather than one driven by ideology, possibly because of his experience of building up his own business in property.
Despite outsourcing many services, he has not been wedded to privatisation at all costs but did face opposition - some from his own party - when it came to the commissioning of adult care, which saw a lucrative contract to the consultancy Newton Europe in 2013.
He combined his political skills with his business acumen when drug giant Pfizer scaled back its operations at its Sandwich site. He took charge of a taskforce set up to deal with the devastating consequences on 2,400 jobs.
His period as leader also saw the council in the limelight after opening the first ‘new’ grammar school in decades - albeit an extension rather than a fully fledged stand-alone school. Inevitably, it drew as much criticism as praise but he believes other areas should be allowed to develop selective schools.
“If I was inventing grammars, I would have them for the 10-15% of the brightest children...I would have super-selective schools for
‘I want a bit of my life back. I don’t want to give up public service but I want to do three days a week rather than six’