The cost of living crisis presents local authorities across the UK with significant and financially painful challenges – not least through the well-documented rising numbers of households in costly temporary accommodation, which is not unique to Gravesham.

Gravesham in north west Kent is, to many from further afield, the heart of the prosperous South East. But in reality, some of our town centre wards are among the most deprived in the country, and we have some of the widest discrepancies in health and wellbeing measures including life expectancy between those wards and others in the more prosperous rural areas of the borough.