Reform UK council under fire for removing Victorian lamp posts
The Reform UK-led council is planning to remove almost 250 historic lamp posts and replace them with “cheap and banal” alternatives
Kent County Council is facing criticism over its plans to remove hundreds of Victorian cast-iron lamp posts from streets in Canterbury.
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The Reform UK-led council is planning to remove almost 250 historic lamp posts and replace them with “cheap and banal” alternatives, according to a campaigner.
Ptolemy Dean, president of the Canterbury Society, has said that Canterbury is one of only three areas in the UK to have retained a full set of the bespoke 19th-century cast-iron posts.
He told The Times that Kent County Council had decided it was more economical to throw the old ones away and replace them with standard steel posts that have some “heritage features attached”.
Read more: Full transcript of chaotic Reform council meeting that saw four suspended
Mr Dean added that the new lamp posts are a "grotesque disfigurement" which “discharge those involved from any responsibility for the consequences of not bothering to re-paint or maintain the cast iron originals”.
The council came under fire in October 2025 after it announced plans to remove nine lamp posts from Cossington Road, claiming they were unsafe.
Residents at the time said that the decision to remove the heritage posts would "materially destroy the character of the street".
Kent County Council told KentOnline at the time that the cost of repairing the original lamp posts would be three times the amount of simply replacing them.
It was revealed in December that Reform UK's flagship local authority's debt will increase by tens of millions of pounds, even if it puts up council tax by the maximum possible amount, according to a leaked forecast of next year's finances.
Kent County Council was won by Reform at local elections in May, when their candidates promised to cut council spending and keep taxes low.
Soon after taking power, the administration set up an Elon Musk-style savings unit called the Department of Local Government Efficiency (DOLGE).
A leaked slideshow for opposition councillors, seen by the Press Association, shows there is a £60 million gap in KCC's finances for 2026-27.
Kent County Council has been contacted by LBC for comment.