Protect & Preserve The Folkestone Leas

  Just a typical sight outside the towns' Sainsburys every day, in fact, I have never seen it this bad anywhere else I have lived in the country. I lived mostly in Bexley, and more recently in Lincolnshire and Nottingham, before moving back to my home county. This is the same outside KFC, Iceland, the Folca building , the Premier shop in Sandgate Road , and every boarded-up shop in the town centre. This is what Folkestone has now become: a warehouse for drunks, druggies and their dealers, beggars and rough sleepers, with many having dogs with them. It certainly never was noticeable to me in March 2023 when I moved to the town centre, not throughout 2024, but then suddenly in 2025, we seemed to be overrun by an invasion of mostly white middle-aged men and a small number of women, all aggressively high on alcohol or drugs or an addictive diet of the two. Last year, we saw an explosion of these aggressive miscreants arriving on our town centre streets, the Leas and the R...

  I seriously believe that the biggest cause of our Leas Promenade's destruction of its Victorian / Edwardian/ Art Deco heritage has to be laid at the door of Folkestone & Hythe District Council, formerly called Shepway District Council. The Shepway District was formed in 1974 and renamed FHDC in 2018. We also have the Town Council, though heaven knows why we need a town council, as no one I've ever spoken to knows much about it.   The former balcony beneath the Leas Cliff Hall.    How it looks now like a football stadium.  The state of the Leas infrastructure, our heritage, is in serious decline. From its crumbling ragstone walls on both the Promenade level and below on Madeira Walk, its cracking paths, and corroding Victorian lampposts, to its rapid loss of sea views along whole swathes of its entire length. The lost paths that once took generations of locals as well as visitors back and forth up and down the Leas cliff face. Dangerous fencing that needs r...

        This post above came up on my personal FB memory today, of exactly 2 years ago. I thought I'd share it here so that these photos are in the public domain for posterity reasons to look back on one day. If there was anything positive to come from the landslide on the Road of Remembrance, then it has to be the recovery of what was a lost view of the sea and the harbour arm for possibly 20 years or so along this far eastern stretch of the Leas escarpment. Last year, along with over 200 people, we watched the fireworks going off at the harbour arm, something that none of us would have seen from this vantage point back before January 27th, 2024.           We must never allow this local authority or any other in the future to let this special view be lost to us and future generations to be able to enjoy. You can see what we are missing out on along other points across the Leas escarpment cliff top summit with views blighted by tall evasive t...

  Unbelievably, this issue with the Victorian Street Lampposts on the Leas Promenade has been ongoing since 2017, eight years or more. Possibly longer! Just more evidence that FHDC or Shepway Council, as it was previously known, hasn't got a Scooby Doo what it's doing other than just wilfully, all these years, starving the Leas Promenade of the funds to maintain its falling apart infrastructure. We need better than this for the Leas Promenade because its heritage is being destroyed, along with its once-sweeping sea views of the English Channel. These lamposts, all 36 of them, are Folkestone's Heritage; they are well over 125 years old now and have not had a lick of paint on them since 2014, when Prince Harry unveiled the Step Short Arch in a ceremony to mark the centenary of the start of World War 1 in 1914. Cast-iron lampposts in seaside or coastal areas should be inspected annually and typically require repainting  every 1 to 3 years  to combat accelerated corrosion fr...

      Folkestone's Aberfan in the making! Dear all, thank you for sticking with me on this 70-page LIDAR Survey and Visual Slope Stability Assessment of the Leas Escarpment,   carried out back in May 2024, commissioned by FHDC and paid for by us, council taxpayers. When I read the following statement in the report, I felt physically sickened that the Children's Play Area still remains open in the Coastal Park. Quote 3.2 and 3.3 on page 20 of the LIDAR SURVEY 3.2. Vulnerability and risk at the site The scope of this report does not include deterministic or probabilistic landslide risk assessment. However, in order to provide options for the purpose of mitigation measures, the vulnerability assessment and risk evaluation need to be discussed. Considering the location of the cliff adjacent to the playground, children can be considered to have higher vulnerability to fast-moving landslide/debris flow because they cannot escape if the landslide happens during playtime. Ch...