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.