Folkestone is changing. Once a quiet coastal Kentish town, it’s now a destination for a growing number of ex-Londoners seeking a new pace of life by the sea. For Rhys Griffiths, founder of the Folkestone Dispatch Substack newsletter, this shift is more than just a demographic trend. It’s reshaping what local news means and who it serves.

As someone who both grew up in the local area and then spent a large part of his journalism career in the county – five years with the county's dominant title, Kent Online, before being made redundant last year – Griffiths has seen Folkestone change firsthand. And he decided to use his redundancy payout to start an independent news outlet to meet those changing needs.

He describes his core audience as people in their late 30s or early 40s, often with young families, who have relocated from London. It's an advantage Folkestone has over the neighbouring seaside town of Dover, he claims.

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"They’re relocating to the seaside for a new life, relatively cash-rich in a way — maybe they’ve swapped London living expenses for something different. These are the sort of people that I really think would be prepared to pay £5 a month to support something very community-focused in a place that they have a passion for because they’ve chosen to move here."