Unacceptable closure in Sevenoaks

Many residents will have been badly affected by today’s closure of St John’s Hill in Sevenoaks.

South East Water have been carrying out works on the road on a permit from Kent Highways for an overnight (2000 – 0500) closure for three nights starting last night. The terms of the permit were that the road would be open during the day, without any traffic management measures. However, this morning the condition of the road was affected by the works and the road closure was left in place (without the local Streetworks team being informed). It is this that has caused today’s severe traffic problems.

This is completely unacceptable; the matter is being escalated by our officers and I will separately be writing and taking the matter up with South East Water. Work is now underway with the aim of being able to open the road for tomorrow morning, although at present I cannot confirm whether this will happen.

Streetworks and road closures

Severe traffic problems after an accident on the M25 - but coming at a time of a lot of road closures, in particular for planned SGN works on the A25 at Sundridge - sparked a lot of debate on local Facebook pages. Given this, a few comments from me on Streetworks and their implications are in order. 

The general position on Streetworks is that the utilities are ‘statutory undertakers’ - they have a right to use the highway when needed for their works and there is little scope to refuse them. Planned works are discussed with KCC/ Kent Highways and they make a major effort to coordinate them … BUT the sheer volume of works (up sharply in recent years across the country), along with efforts to limit disruption in relation to (for example) school travel makes this challenging … AND this is often made much worse by emergency works, which can play havoc with planning. In that case, the utility acts first and informs the highway authority within two hours of starting. About a third of works in Kent are emergencies, and to the best of my knowledge this is similar elsewhere; I hear the same concerns from my counterparts in other counties.

Emergencies explain a lot of the situations when wider areas experience severe disruption, though this wasn’t the case in the incident that sparked the debatereflecting instead a horrible crash on the M25. 

The problem for local authorities, including Kent, is that our legal position and powers are relatively weak. We have, along with other councils, argued for change and we continue to review what we can do within the existing setup; we will be reporting back on that work in the coming months. We are only too aware of how disruptive this is.

Children’s Services under pressure

On Tuesday I had the opportunity to give evidence to the House of Commons Education Select Committee on the pressures facing local authorities’ children’s services. I did so in my role as Children’s Services spokesperson for the County Councils Network (CCN), though there was quite a bit of reference in the discussion to our experience in Kent. I gave evidence along with John Pearce, President of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (and Director of Children’s Services at Durham County Council) and Stuart Ashley, Director of Children’s Services at Hampshire County Council, who gave evidence remotely. 

In the hearing, I set out the pressures experienced by councils which have seen expenditure at CCN members almost double over the last decade. There has been an increase in the number of children in care (though in Kent our numbers, excluding asylum seeking children, have been fairly steady) but the bigger effect has been from rising costs. There has been a shift from councils’ own fostering arrangements to independent fostering agencies, from fostering to residential provision, and a big rise in very expensive placements of young people with very severe needs that are not being met elsewhere.

The well-received Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, chaired by Josh MacAlister, reported in May 2022 proposing major reforms to address these challenges. The White Paper issued by government in response, ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’ sets a good overall policy direction, but does not commit the funding  needed to deliver these changes as a rapid pace. Addressing these challenges will remain a matter of vital importance for Kent County Council and other local authorities, and I was glad to be able to have the chance to make the case. 

You can find the meeting on the parliamentary channel here.

Road closures in Swanley Village

 Some updates on road closures in the village. 

Tomorrow (Friday 8 March) there will be the long-delayed closure of Gildenhill Road for Kent Highways to carry out carriageway repairs. The closure will be between 9:30 and 2:30 and will be between Church Road and Clement Street.

There are still some works due to be carried out on Highlands Hill too but they have again been put back because of other works going on. 

A little further out, Highlands Hill will be closed (10-11 April) for Thames Water works on a fire hydrant. This will be a full road closure (apparently the works will be in the middle of the road) and will be continuous (in other words, including overnight). It is, however, during the half term period and is scheduled for that purpose to avoid disruption to the school. 

There will be a separate closure by KCC on Highlands Hill (to replace a street lighting column) on 30 April, but that will only be between 9:30 and 2:30so once more, this will avoid having an impact on school drop-off and pick up. 

More immediately, the works at the bottom of Highlands Hill (a company called Triconnex providing electricity and gas connections to the development on the old nursery site) are going from two way to four way lights as the works have reached the junction with Swanley Lane. (This took place either yesterday or today). The four way lights, which are manually controlled from 7am to 7pm to ease congestion, will be on for a relatively short time as they become two-way again as they move up the road towards Hextable. All the works should be completed by 22 March. 

Farningham 20mph scheme installed

As some residents will already be aware, the 20mph scheme in Farningham, long championed by the Parish Council, should be installed next week. Kent County Council will carry out the necessary works overnight between 8pm on Thursday 29 February and 5am the following morning. 

The 20mph scheme will be installed in High Street, London Road, Dartford Road, Hillside and Sparepenny Lane from the High Street/ London Road junction to outside Hampton Court Cottage. 

The Parish Council has strongly advocated for this scheme, incorporating it in the Highways Improvement Plan (HIP) that each Parish or Town Council develops with Kent Highways. I was pleased to support it from my Combined Member Grant; there was also funding from KCC’s Local Transport Plan, and the Parish Council contributed CIL funding to the earlier stages of the project. It’s taken some time, and quite a lot of work to get to this point but in just over a week the scheme should be in place.

Pilgrims Way reopened

Pilgrims Way is now open, and the South East Water works are complete. 

The Traffic Management signs are still up, but the company which supplies them will be retrieving them shortly. Our Streetworks team has sought to get the utility to get these works completed ahead of the scheduled three days, and they are now done.

Swanley Village highways works next week

Kent Highways works on potholes on Highlands Hill and on Gildenhall Road, scheduled for last week, were delayed following sickness among the gang who were due to carry them out. They have now been rescheduled for next Monday, 12 February, and so by taking place in half term should avoid causing difficulties for school drop off and pick up.   

The potential problem is that this is also bin collection day. However, SDC have been informed of the closure (they are on the Streetworks mailing list for closures) and the two councils have been in contact. The collections will take place quite early on Monday (please note!), any time from 7 am but certainly out of the area by 9:30, which is when the highways works get under way. Road closures in each of the two roads should not last more than two hours per road, though the formal closure allowed for on Highlands Hill (which will affect the whole road) is between 9:30 and 2:30.

Pilgrims Way closure for South East Water works

Residents have raised the further closure on Pilgrims Way next week, coming shortly after last weekend’s works.

Pilgrims Way will be closed for three days commencing 14 February between the Row Dow junction and Beechy Leas Road. This is for works by South East Water to replace a leaking stop cock at a nearby property. The stop cock is at the edge of the carriageway in a narrow part of the road, so a closure is required for the works.   

 This is therefore a closure undertaken by the utility, for which they have statutory powers. It is not a KCC closure for highways works, though a planned closure of this kind is coordinated with KCC (as opposed to emergency closures, on which KCC is not required to be consulted in advance).

Our Streetworks team are working to reduce the disruption that this will cause by requiring that the road is closed only when work is taking place (this is possible for works of this kind because they do not require, for example, a period to set). At other times, the signage will be pulled in and the road opened, though at present there are no set times for this.

It is very disruptive for residents that this comes so soon after the closure in Pilgrims Way East, and that this comes after a number of other closures. In addition to the approach described above to try to reduce this impact on residents, the works are scheduled for the half term week for the same purpose.

It’s been asked why the two sets of works could not have been carried out at the same time. The reason is that, because they were at, in effect, opposite ends of Pilgrims Way East, residents living between them (including all those in Tudor Drive and Tudor Crescent) would have been unable to get out, except perhaps via Row Dow and routes beyond that, which would in most cases have been a vastly greater diversion than is required by either set of works on their own.

Counting down to EES

In the course of the last week, I had the opportunity to highlight to a parliamentary committee the challenges to Kent from the anticipated introduction of the European Union’s Entry Exit System (EES). You can find Kent County Council’s media release on this here.

Deirdre Wells, chief executive of Visit Kent, Andrew Osborne, head of economic development at Ashford Borough Council and I gave evidence to the House of Commons European Scrutiny Committee on Wednesday. EES, which brings with it requirements for biometric checks on entry to the EU external frontier, is now expected (after a number of delays) to be introduced in October. This raises the prospect of long delays because of the very constrained space within the Port of Dover, resulting in further large scale disruption to Kent’s roads, businesses and visitor economy, in addition to its impact on the quality of residents’ lives.

We had a good hearing from the Committee, and I set out the need to ensure that, at the very minimum, there is extensive communication and preparation; but we must make every effort to present the case for some form of pre-registration. While Kent County Council and our partners in the county will more than play our part, this is above all a matter for government. We are seeing government respond to this approaching crisis, and raised this successfully in a recent visit by the Roads Minister, Guy Opperman. But as I pointed out, we are not yet seeing the scale of government focus and preparation that we had in the run up to the end of Brexit transition in 2020. Yet the effects could be at least as great.

Pilgrims Way East: works at the weekend

Many residents will have seen from the signage up in Pilgrims Way East that there will be a further closure this weekend. The closure will be between the Tudor Drive junction and the A225 Shoreham Road, and will be from 7:30 am on Saturday 3 February until 11:59 pm on Sunday evening. 

The works are to address the deficiencies on the tabletop by the Tudor Drive junction, and the outcome should be something more like the tabletop at the Row Dow junction. This design also requires less time for the curing of the kerbs. 

The recommended diversion route is, as before, via Childsbridge Lane, the A25 and the A225 Sevenoaks Road and Station Road.

Government funding: welcome but not a game changer

It’s not often that we get some unexpectedly good news on funding, but that did come through in the middle of last week. After a strong campaign led by the County Councils Network, in which Kent County Council played its part and worked closely with our Members of Parliament, the government made an unusually late amendment to the Local Government Finance Settlement. This gave an additional £600 million to the sector, of which £500 million goes to councils (like KCC) with responsibility for children’s services and adult social care.

We do not yet know our precise allocation, but estimate it (on the basis of past methods of distributing the social care grant, which is the approach that will be used) to be somewhat over £10 million, probably between £11.5 and £12.8 million. 

This is, as I have said, welcome but not a game changer. It has to be seen in the context of our £1.3 billion budget and the £118 million savings gap with which we started our budget process. It does not address the underlying pressures that are driving up local authority spend, and the outlook for the next few years (whoever forms a government after the election) suggests that funding settlements or remain tight.The cavalry is not coming over the hill. 

Nonetheless, after a disappointing outcome to the Autumn Statement and the provisional Local Government Finance Settlement, it is a welcome recognition of at least some of the pressures local government is experiencing. And it all helps. 

You can find our statement here.

Swanley Village road works (continued)

For anyone confused as to what happened on Highlands Hill today, it was not what was originally expected. 

Kent Highways were due to undertake works on potholes in Highlands Hill and go on to work on Gildenhill Road). However, members of the gang due to carry it out were sick, and so neither set of highways works took place. At present I don’t have a new date for these works.

At the same time, UKPN came in to carry out emergency works on some cable repairs (a fault on low voltage cables). These works will continue tomorrow. I understand that Councillor Chris Prestedge has ensured that these take account of school drop off and pick up times.

Swanley Village road works on Monday

For anyone who hasn’t seen it, some details of Monday’s (29 January) road closure in Highlands Hill (for some pothole works by KCC). The road will be closed outside Tudor House.

The permit sets out that the works will start at 9:30 am and finish no later than 2:30 pm, avoiding creating problems for school drop off or pick up. Hopefully the finish should be some time before that; the works in Highlands Hill relate to two potholes and the gang is carrying out several jobs in the local area and so will need to move on to those as quickly as possible. 

In particular, the Highlands Hill works will not be at the same time as Gildenhill Road, which will be closed in full to enable KCC to carry out carriageway repairs. I presume that that closure will be later in the day, but it is probably best avoided throughout Monday if possible.

A225 Shoreham Road: latest on the works

An update on the works on the A225 Shoreham Road. All still going ahead, but a change of timing.

As anyone using that stretch of road may have noticed, the temporary 30mph speed limit has not yet been introduced (I had previously posted that this would start on Monday 15th. Work has started, but the contractor is so far focusing on vegetation clearance. There’s a lot to do - some 950 metres to be cleared. Most of this is mobile works, though I believe that there were some temporary traffic lights in place on Monday.

The temporary speed limit to accommodate the signing work will now begin next Monday, 22 January. It will be scheduled for two weeks, though hopefully the works should take less time than that. Lining and red surface patching should also be installed at that time, though this is subject to weather conditions (in other words, not as cold as it is now).

A225 Shoreham Road speed limit: works to start tomorrow

Work is due to start tomorrow to implement the long-awaited 40mph speed limit and improve safety on the A225 Shoreham Road, in particular in the section near the junction with Station Road Shoreham. Starting to the north of that junction, and running south beyond the Fackenden Lane junction, it should also support observance of the 30mph zone on the approach into Otford.

The measures introduced will comprise warning signs (pedestrian crossing signs) approaching the crossing points of public footpaths SR18 and SR22 along with white Glasdon Gates, village signs, red surfacing and both 40mph signs and roundels. 

The works are expected to take around two weeks (the precise outcome being dependent on weather conditions) and will require from tomorrow a temporary 30mph speed limit, running from 160 metres south of the junction with Fackenden Lane to 400 metres to its north. 

The scheme has been a long time in preparation and Shoreham Parish Council have rightly been determined in pursuing it. I have worked with the Parish Council and with Kent Highways to get this delivered. It will be good to see it in place.

Pedham Place and the Sevenoaks Local Plan

Yesterday I submitted my response to Sevenoaks District Council’s Regulation 18 consultation on the Local Plan (Plan 2040). This is copied below; it sets out my concerns about Options 2 and 3 put forward by the Council, both of which incorporate development proposals for 2,500 houses at Pedham Place. The implications of this for Sevenoaks North and Darent Valley, and for the northern parishes of Crockenhill, Eynsford, Farningham and Horton Kirby and South Darenth in particular are very concerning. The proposals for the Wasps stadium in the same area create a still more serious cumulative impact.