Robbery charge after shop raided

A man has been charged with robbery after £60,000 worth of jewellery was reported stolen from a city shop.

Patrick Mcdermott was arrested in London on Friday following the raid at Hadfields jewellers in Castle Street, Canterbury, on Wednesday, December 19, in which cabinets were smashed and glass left strewn across the floor.

The 31-year-old has been charged with robbery and driving while disqualified.

Mcdermott, from Brixton in London, has been remanded in custody and will appear at To advertise: 01634 227817

ber suggests Michael’s confidence may not be misplaced. In the build-up to the vote, Labour’s Ben Hickman was tipped to run Tory Robert Thomas close. However, he was pushed into third by the Lib Dems, whose chances were largely overlooked.

Despite this, Michael adds the caveat that the Lib Dems’ “most optimistic scenario” would see the Conservatives ceding its majority – opening up the opportunity for his party to run the council in coalition with Labour.

In the unlikely event the party does take control of the local authority in May, it promises an attempt to halt construction of the £9.1m multi-storey car park in Station Road West, build social housing and crackdown on litter and graffiti beyond the city walls.

The first of these is the most hotly debated issue in the city. With the local authority poised to sign a contract with construction firm Willmott Dixon to begin work on the project, Michael says his first act as leader of the council would be to tear up the agreement.

“I’ve told the council’s chief executive, Colin Carmichael, not to allow the Conservatives to put in clauses to try to prevent cancellation,” he says.

“If they lose control, there will be a majority who will vote to have it binned. I know at least three Conservatives who have very strong reservations about it.

“The Tories will have signed the agreement and work will have started by the time of the election, but we’d be able to cancel it with only some of the work being done.

“The clauses, though, could make it cost £2m, as opposed to £1m.”

The Lib Dems’ pledge to build council homes is unsurprising. They, along with Labour, have regularly lambasted the Conservatives’ attempts to tackle the waiting list – which had 2,500 households on it at the end of last year. Most of their criticism is aimed at the local authority’s unsuccessful bid for 147 houses at Howe Barracks in 2016, its £23m acquisition of 44 properties in Parham Road and the worrying revelation that no new council homes have been built in the past seven years.

Michael states the Lib Dems would take advantage of the government’s recent decision to remove the cap on the amount councils can borrow to build new homes. However, Simon Cook argues that the Westgate councillor “is misleading people” as the authority would struggle to repay the loans this way.

“It’s absolute b*****ks that buying the properties is more cost-effective,” Michael bristles.

“They were utterly ripped off with Parham Road. The council paid about four times the build costs for the properties after the owners couldn’t fill them. Building the homes would be better than what they bought because Parham contains student flats; they’re not suitable for families.

“It would take time to build houses because we’d have to obtain the land, but over a fouryear period we’d like to run into three figures. There are areas where council houses could be built – I don’t think anybody would dispute that.”

Michael – who won’t disclose his age but tells me he’s “on the wrong side of 60” – believes the Conservatives lack the experience and business acumen required to run the council, while conceding Simon Cook had a suc- cessful career as a hedge fund manager.

Michael, who runs a consultancy firm, adds: “I find the lack of experience in this area in the council staggering. Cllr Nick Eden-green [Lib Dem] and I probably have more business experience than all of the Tory councillors put together.”

To highlight his claim he points to the council’s acquisition of Whitefriars, which totalled £155m, last year. The authority has said in the past that it took specialist advice before making the investment, which was

We hope to win that seat and there are other rural ones we hope to win

I find the lack of experience in this area in the council staggering