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2017 Kent County Council election

2017 UK local government election

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 29, 2025
Entity authorityQ27958024 ↗
Source-derived summary

The 2017 Kent County Council election was held on 4 May 2017 as part of the 2017 local elections in the United Kingdom. All 81 councillors were elected from 72 electoral divisions, each of which returned either one or two county councillors by first-past-the-post voting for a four-year term of office. The Conservative Party retained control. UKIP, previously the second-largest party on the council, lost all their seats.

The Liberal Democrats regained status as the second largest party, which they had been from 2009 to 2013. A notable triumph for Liberal Democrats was Antony Hook winning the Faversham division, which had been considered a "safe" Conservative seat. Antony Hook's campaign increased the Liberal Democrat vote share from 4% in 2013 to a winning 43%. Faversham also saw the largest turnout of any seat. The Labour Party lost seats, including those of their Leader Roger Truelove and previous leaders Gordon Cowan and Dr. Mike Eddy.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “2017 Kent County Council election” as 2017 UK local government election. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Kent, County and Council.

Editorial reviewA useful synthesis for locating the documentary relationships between formal authority, participants and affected communities. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2017, 2009, 2013—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Kent, County and Council providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “2017 Kent County Council election”, the useful work is to connect “2017 UK local government election” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q27958024. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2017, 2009 and 2013.

Critical limits

Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
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Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “2017 Kent County Council election”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow 2017 Kent County Council election primary sources, 2017 Kent County Council election archive and Kent research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “2017 Kent County Council election”?
  2. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
  3. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “2017 Kent County Council election” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.