PRESS RELEASES

Sojan Joseph, MP for Ashford, Hawkinge, and the Villages has today (15/04/2026) welcomed significant investment from the Labour government into local SEND provision. Kent County Council is to be allocated £12,155,170 to set up a new ‘Experts at Hand’ offer.
As announced in February’s Schools White Paper, the service is designed to provide children with early support and fast access to professionals like speech and language therapists, occupational therapists, and educational psychologists. The offer will involve partnerships between special schools, alternative provision, and mainstream settings to put support in place without needing to go through lengthy assessment processes.

Families in Kent have expressed concerns about long waits in the SEND system, which has led to issues escalating to crisis point before intervention. Labour’s reforms set out in the Schools White Paper, including the introduction of Experts at Hand, are designed to move support earlier in the process, closer to home, without parents having to fight for it.
The final guidance for Experts at Hand will be published next month, setting out how Kent County Council should use the funding to start standing up the service and the grant conditions associated with it.

Sojan Joseph, the MP for Ashford, Hawkinge, and the Villages is urging parents, guardians, and young people to shape the country’s next steps on children’s digital wellbeing, as the UK Government opens the world’s most ambitious consultation.

Mr Joseph, who worked in mental health services for over 20 years before becoming an MP, has been actively campaigning for strengthening safeguards for young people online to protect their mental health and wellbeing.

The consultation will gather insights from the public on how to keep children safe online across social media, AI chatbots and gaming platforms.

Today (25/02/2026) the Department for Transport (DFT) announced a deal with the Network Rail and its property development company Platform4 take long- Platform4 to see an £15m investment in the Barking Eurohub site in east London to transform it into an international logistics hub which would begin to see freight transported via rail through the channel tunnel. 

met with the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister, Darren Jones to discuss a range of local issues facing the county.
Despite receiving £274,036,000 to fix potholes, £78.2 million for local buses, and record investment for local authorities, local transport links have remained poor for residents across the county and KCC received an ‘amber’ rating from the Local Highways Authorities regarding the state of its roads. Adult social care services have also been an ongoing concern for many residents – an issue which was raised by the MPs.

Demelza Children’s Hospice and Pilgrims Adult’s Hospices are set to receive £269,588 and £22,000 respectively.

Labour’s Minister for Care, Stephen Kinnock has confirmed an extra £25 million in funding for children and adult hospices across the United Kingdom.

At a meeting today (22/01/2026) a group of Labour MPs from Kent; Sojan Joseph (Ashford), Tony Vaughan (Folkestone and Hythe), Mike Tapp (Dover and Deal) Jim Dickson (Dartford), and Lauren Sullivan (Gravesham), Naushabah Khan (Gillingham and Rainham),

met with the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister, Darren Jones to discuss a range of local issues facing the county.
Despite receiving £274,036,000 to fix potholes, £78.2 million for local buses, and record investment for local authorities, local transport links have remained poor for residents across the county and KCC received an ‘amber’ rating from the Local Highways Authorities regarding the state of its roads. Adult social care services have also been an ongoing concern for many residents – an issue which was raised by the MPs.

In a letter to the Prime Minister, Sojan Joseph MP for Ashford, along with 60 other Labour MPs, have called for an implementation of a restrictions on social media for under-16’s.

Sojan Joseph MP today thanked NHS staff at the William Harvey Hospital and across East Kent Hospitals for their hard work in continuing to get waiting lists down, as the Labour government marked a year since the publication of its Elective Reform Plan designed to cut waits.

Across England, the NHS saw the waiting list fall by more than 86,000 in November to 7.31 million and by 8936 at Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust since the election, as new national data today shows staff faced record demand in 2025

Pothole Day on the 15th January, and demonstrates that Kent County Council needs to do more to deliver road improvements for residents.

The Government has doubled the annual roads budget and is backing local authorities with a record £7.3 billion, multi-year funding settlement, including £1.5 billion for the South East and £274,036,000 earmarked for Kent.

The new ratings system and record multi-year funding settlement represent a major shift in how the Government supports councils to maintain their roads – moving away from short-term fixes towards

sustainable, preventative maintenance that delivers better value for money and improved road conditions for years to come. By ending the sticking-plaster approach and moving towards long-term, integrated settlements, the Government is empowering councils to deliver better roads for local people.