I'll confront impact of migrants - new Kent leader

Linden Kemkaran has said she worked at the BBC

The Reform UK leader of Kent County Council has said she will try to reduce the impact of "illegal migration" on Kent residents.

Speaking to BBC South East Today after she was chosen council leader, Linden Kemkaran said she could not give detailed plans or measures Reform will take.

She added: "What I want to do is to see what we can do to try and lessen the impact of this wave, this surge of illegal migration on the residents of Kent."

Thousands of migrants have arrived in Kent in recent years on small boats.

Many come from some of the poorest and most chaotic parts of the world, and many ask to claim asylum once they are picked up by the UK authorities.

The number of people who have crossed the English Channel in small boats in 2025 exceeded 10,000 on April 28, an increase of about 40% compared with the same period last year.

Council challenges

Ms Kemkaran said reform councillors were seeing what parts of policy related to migration they could control.

"We are looking at what we can do legally to say, no, we do not want to have our hotels and houses of multiple occupancy filled up in Kent," she added.

She inherits a council teetering on the brink of bankruptcy that faces significant challenges in providing key services like adult social care, education and transport.

Her comments come as a number of migrants, among them women and children, arrived in Dover for the first time in more than a week.

The previous arrivals of migrants arrived on four boats carrying 216 people on 2 May. The total number of arrivals for the year so far stands at 11,516.

In 2024 as a whole, 36,816 were detected making the crossing. The highest figures were for 2022, when 45,755 people arrived.