Er, no?
Exactly
Although in terms of cases per population Kent is a long way down the table, the rate of increase in cases has been high enough to propel it from lower in the absolute cases table to the top spot, then extend that lead. It does seem to be the case that there are various hotspots, Kent was one in mid April and now it looks like it's the northwest that's having a bit of a surge.
All this will complicate things when the lockdown is eased, as if there's a greater R value in some areas then the last thing you want to do is encourage more mixing. I don't envy the planners' task, that's for sure!
I mentioned before that Kent's rise has been due to the different situation between London and the rest of the country. Interesting that Kent hasn't been closer to London's trend though. Has there been any breakdown of Kent's figures to smaller parts of the county? There was a huge 367 cases the other day although that followed a week of very few cases so that day's figure was presumably actually the result of several days' testing.
I really don't think that comparing absolute numbers is very helpful though when local authorities are so different in size. Kent has 4110 cases which is over 10 times more than Redcar and Cleveland's 359 yet due to Kent's population being over 10 times larger both have 262 cases per 100,000 of population.
Nope, it's a difficult task facing the planners. Several months down the line they will be criticised either for being too slow or for being too fast with loosening, quite possibly both at the same time. Get it wrong and you face a lot of economic damage being blamed on you or a lot of deaths. No real precedents, uncertain public reaction, etc. Number of cases here is about 15% of what is was at its peak but we are still seeing a few cases everyday, it is still out there, presumably there are (admittedly a small number of) asymptomatic people walking round every day.