A new Church Room for All Souls Crockenhill

Yesterday I was delighted to attend the opening of the new Church Room - actually, a stand alone small building - serving All Souls Church in Crockenhill. The Room was opened, after s short service of dedication, by the Venerable James Logstaff, Bishop of Rochester.

The project has been long in its development and - like many a building project - has brought a fair amount of anxiety and heartache along the way. That it has been delivered is a big tribute to the church and wider community of Crockenhill. The Room will serve both for church functions, including hopefully Sunday School, and the Crockenhill community as a whole - as a result of the latter, I was able to give some support (£2,000 from my Combined Member Fund, which contributed towards the floor). The building (and the floor) look wonderful and hopefully will be a valued resource for years to come.

The 2017-18 pothole blitz

With the end of the financial year approaching, the Find and Fix Programme (aka the 'pothole blitz') is also almost concluded.

This year saw some £5.2 million spent on the Find and Fix programme; £2.2 million from the Deaprtment for Transport's Captial Pothole Grant, and the remainder from KCC capital and revenue contributions. The whole budget has been committed and most of the works completed; a few await the completion of other works (for example, by utilities) in the relevant area.

All told, some 117,000 square metres have been repaired; the equivalent of 18 Wembley football pitches, or 18 kilometres of typical road. Overall, the quality of the work delivered by locally commissioned contractors (SCG in the case of Sevenoaks) has been good.

We await full clarity on what funding will be available for the new financial year. However, the pressures are on (which will not come as any surprise to anyone observing recent weather); January saw just under 4,000 pothole enquiries from the public, a multiple of the levels seen in recent years and comparable to the level seen at the start of 2014, which was a time of major flooding. So there will be plenty to be done once Spring is upon us.