| Monday, 23 July 2007 | |
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MP slams Kent Highways over closure of West Hill Dartford MP, Dr Howard Stoate, has reacted angrily to the news that West Hill in Dartford is to be closed for an astonishing 18 weeks from the end of July until Christmas.The planned closure, which will affect eastbound traffic, is to be carried out in order to allow work on the new entrance to the West Hill Hospital development to take place. It will be overseen by Kent County Council’s Highways Department. “I am absolutely astonished that Kent County Council is prepared to sit back and allow part of one of Dartford’s major arteries to be closed for the best part of 5 months. It quite simply beggars belief,” said Dr Stoate. “How on earth do they expect the town centre to function during these five months? The ring road and West Hill are already gridlocked for much of the day - a situation that has been made worse, not better, by KCC’s last attempt to re-engineer the town centre road layout. This is going to make matters much, much worse and create total chaos on the roads.” “Kent seems to have given no thought to the impact that this is going to have on ordinary motorists in West Dartford. I can’t believe that there isn’t a better way of managing this. Everyone accepts that building a new entrance way is going to cause some disruption, but this is ridiculous. It looks to me as though KCC is putting the needs of the contractors well ahead of those of local residents.” “Sadly it is not the first time that residents in West Dartford have been let down by Kent Highways in recent months. First there was the fiasco of the Miskin Road traffic calming scheme and now there is this. It doesn’t say much about the service provided by Kent Highways.” “To cap it all it appears that there has been absolutely no communication between Kent Highways and Dartford Borough Council about the proposed closure. It seems that the first that Borough Council knew about it was when signs started appearing in and around West Hill. It doesn’t reflect well on the so called ‘enhanced two tier working’ between KCC and DBC that is supposed to be in place now.” The MP has now written to the head of Kent Highways to demand a complete rethink of the closure plans. |
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© 2008 Dr Howard Stoate - Member of Parliament for Dartford
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