Medway Council boasts four independent councillors.

Not tied down by party allegiances, local democracy reporter Robert Boddy went to speak with Ron Sands, councillor for Hoo St Werburgh and High Halstow, to find out what being a free agent means and what he aims to achieve.

Ron Sands tells me proudly he’s a hooligan. A hooligan, he explains, is someone born in Hoo, whereas Hoo-ites are people who move there.

But he’s not the first in his family, he tells me, his grandmother was born in Hoo, and his family down to his 18-month-old grandson are all hooligans too.

It’s an apt description for Ron as, when I met him at Taggs Coffee Shop, his unofficial office, he talks at length about all the things he loves about the place he’s from and how he’ll do anything to protect it and its residents.

From the age of nine Ron wanted to go into the army, and at age 15 he left school and went in, becoming a junior leader.

At 17 he was sent to Germany along with thousands of other soldiers, and found himself guarding the East German–West German border.

However, by 1976 Ron had lost interest in the army and decided to leave, returning to Hoo where he worked odd-jobs.

“I did what most squaddies do, I didn’t know what to do. Many squaddies just wander because they’ve lost that routine.”

He’s worked as a postal officer, a milkman, a bus conductor, 10 years as a stock control clerk for Lucas C.A.V., a wholesaler with an old army friend, then he sold furniture at country shows, and he even ran his own professional wrestling school in East London.

While working for a temp agency, Ron started working for JCB in Medway, and over 12 years he rose from a van driver to group retail parts manager, overseeing 10 depots.

He tells me the thing that had kept him moving around had been a lack of interest, and he was always looking for something to really grab him.

It turned out, he said, it had been much closer to home than he had realised.

Ron is devoted to Hoo and the peninsula, and says he wants to preserve its outstanding natural beauty so future generations can enjoy what people like Charles Dickens and further back have enjoyed.

He first got involved in politics when he stood for the English Democrats in 2010, when he joined their campaign for an English parliament alongside the Scottish parliament and Welsh and Northern Irish assemblies.

However, he says he never felt comfortable sitting within a party, and so after trying out the Conservatives in the 2014 council by-elections, he stood as an independent.

In 2015, outside of electoral politics, Ron started the Hands Off Hoo campaign, to protect the peninsula from housing developments.

This, he says, was his first real success, from which everything else has followed.

“I wanted to concentrate on here. I’ve never fit into any political party - I think it’s because I don’t like being told what to do - but I want to focus on the peninsula, and political parties don’t tend to do that because they have more of a scattergun approach.”

“I got to walk the fields and see the same nature my father saw. I want my grandson to have the same opportunity of walking the sea wall, of seeing the marshes and nature in its rawness. And that’s very important for everybody here.”

The Hands Off Hoo campaign, and the Deangate Community Partnership which followed in 2018, managed to prevent developments on the peninsula, and even got the Deangate golf course, which closed in 2018, designated as an asset of community value (ACV), protecting it from housebuilding.

“It became a passion,” Ron says, “and when I retired it became a full-time passion.”

Following his local successes, Ron was elected in 2019 and his first motion was to ask Medway to declare Hoo peninsula an area of outstanding natural beauty.

“We failed back then. Alan Jarrett, the council leader at the time, wasn’t interested. But we’re still trying now.

“We’ve now got support from Kent Wildlife and the RSPB, so that’s still an on-going dream.”

Ron says he’s more optimistic about the new Labour council, and is particularly positive about Labour’s portfolio holder for climate change and strategic regeneration, Cllr Simon Curry.

“He understands the environment and he’s worked out on the peninsula, he’s someone I have a great deal of respect for.

“The Labour group seem more open. With the last administration we had to use Freedom of Information requests just to find out what was going on because they were so secretive.”

Ron tells me he’s not against houses being built in Hoo and on the peninsula, but he wants to make sure it’s the right sort of development, not one that will destroy its community and character.

“We do need housing, we’ve always said that, but it’s got to be in the right place, sustainable, and built to last. I don’t think that’s unreasonable.

“I’ve been called a NIMBY; if I’m protecting an international beauty spot then I’m fine with being called a NIMBY.”

When the Housing Infrastructure Fund totalling £170 million was withdrawn, Ron was relieved as he and other independents thought the plans hadn’t been fully thought through and he didn’t think the money would match the proposals.

“When HIF went, we were pleased because we’d been campaigning against it for a long time. We knew the plans were never going to work, and we saw that when they started chopping and changing things.

“For everything they said they were going to do, roads, a new train station, there just wasn’t enough, and we were worried they’d start a load of little bits of infrastructure that would never be finished.

“We were accused of dancing in the street by both political parties, but if you campaign on something and you win, you’re elated.”

Ron is in Taggs most days, doing a lot of his council business from there because it’s a place where residents can come and find him and raise their concerns or just have a chat.

He often brings his 18-month-old grandson along with him to meetings, and Ron says the introduction of the little one into his life has changed it completely.

When he’s not doing his work as a councillor or spending time with his grandson, Ron likes to read, though he admits he enjoys depressing books like those by Alexander Solzhenitzyn or the darker of the Dickens.

But the thing he says he devotes his life to is Hoo and the peninsula, and he’s got ideas for how he can enhance life for its residents.

Despite the 31,000 people living on the peninsula, there’s not one bank. Ron would like to see a mobile bank introduced which could travel between villages and service people who can’t use online banking and can’t travel to the nearest bank in Strood.

He also wants to improve public transport in terms of the level of service as well as the frequency. He admits that the peninsula has become reliant on cars, but he says this is only because public transport isn’t reliable enough.

But most of all, he wants to inspire Medway Council as a whole to advertise Hoo and the peninsula more, talk about its historical and natural attractions and get residents to enjoy what they’ve got on their own doorstep.

“We should be shouting about this. There’s so much history and wildlife here. Medway council should be saying “go to Hoo!”. That’s what I want, because it’s such an incredible place.”