News | Hermitage Lane ‘Why won’t they listen to us?’


RESIDENTS near a gridlocked road feel their protests about traffic and pollution are going unheard. People living around Hermitage


Lane, Maidstone, are fed up after months of traffic jams near their homes. A Bovis housing development


near the Maidstone Hospital has in- volved temporary traffic lights to manage vehiclemovements, as has a Bellway house-building scheme fur- ther along the road. Work on new homes at the Royal British Legion site on the A20, plus a new McDon- ald’s restaurant, Poundland and Aldi supermarket have caused more chaos. Lastweek matters came to a head


whenSouth EastWater laid a pipe to serve the Royal British Legion site, and brought in a traffic light con- trolled chicane system. The resultwas traffic queued back


to junction 5 of theM20atAylesford, along the A20 near the Sainsbury’s shopping park, and right back to the hospital at Barming. Health chiefs have urged patients


and visitors to allow more time to get to the hospital. Bus companies Arriva and Nu-Venture have also warned passengers to expect severe delays on the route. Meanwhile, residents are worried not just about the jams, but also the


THEREwas some good news for Hermitage Lane users with the completion of the pipeline. South EastWater’s Distribution Manager Ann Seach said: “Ourworks in Hermitage Lane are complete andwe have put the carriageway back. “The essentialwork involved


laying awater main connection for the new veterans’ accommodation. South East Water has an obligation to supply new developments. “Althoughweworked closely


Protestors Keith Young, BarbaraWoodward, Angela Poletti and Louisa Garratt “The results clearly demonstrate


pollution from standing traffic. Barbara Woodward, who leads


the New Allington Action Group campaigning to get road relief in the area, told theDownsMail that coun- cils are not listening. The group’s aim is “to Save Our Bluebell Wood & Open Space. No more development. Put an end to the congestion misery on Hermitage Lane&surrounding roads.” Mrs Woodward said:“We are at a standstill and not getting anywhere. We monitored the pollution last year by putting up fusion tubes on the road and sending them for analysis.


that the air we breathe along Her- mitage Lane breaks EU guidelines. “And it is only set to get worse


with the introduction of more vehi- cles due to over-development. Traf- fic lights are the worst culprit of pollution on roads and Hermitage Lane will soon look like the Las Vegas strip with all its traffic lights at intersections of housing entrances. “Pollution was much higher than


it should have been and was dan- gerously high for some people, like asthma sufferers.We sent the results to Maidstone Borough Council and


with the highways authoritywe know this has caused disruption andwould like to thank motorists for their patience.”


Kent County Council, but both said itwas just a two-week snapshot and the traffic needed to be monitored for a year to get robust results. “It takes 40 minutes to get down


that lane and 10 years ago therewas very little traffic.Nowit is at satura- tion point.” More than 3,000 homes have been earmarked for developments in Her- mitage Lane, which is covered by both Maidstone and Tonbridge and Malling Borough Councils.


MP’s furious tweet is just one of many


MP TRACEY Crouch lost her tem- per on Facebook over the chaotic traffic scenes at Hermitage Lane, Maidstone. South EastWater has been laying a


pipe and has brought in a traffic- light controlled chicane to manage the flow of vehicles. After the first day of mayhem,


‘Trapped in our home’


A FAMILY has been trapped in their own home as the gridlock in Hermitage Lane, Maidstone has forced them to stay put. Childminder Vivian Eberlein has used the DownsMail to plan Easter activities near her Hermitage Lane home for her two children Xavier (7) and Jaxon (4) and the youngsters she looks after (pictured). She said: “I look out ofmy window and I just see a queue of traffic and


it wrecks allmy plans. I have tickets for Kent Life, Leeds Castle and the Hop Farm, but I have tomake fun near here for the children or we would be stuck in a car all day.” Already the midday naps for children she looks after – whose ages


range from two to eight – are being curtailed, as they are taken to clubs and have to be woken early. Now she tries to avoid using her car, instead organising walks in the


woods, followed by a picnic, or arts and crafts around the house. “Everyone is sick of the traffic situation. I hope they build a new road to


relieve some of the queues because it is getting beyond a joke,” she said. “We are having to leave 20 minutes earlier to collect the children from school, just because we are stuck in gridlock.”


4 Malling April 2017


Miss Crouch posted a message to say South EastWater had convinced her itwas taking action to relieve the jams, which stretch back to the hos- pital at one end, and Junction 5 of the M20 at the other. But last night she wrote: “Scrap previous post on Hermitage Lane works. Been up three times today. It's bloody awful. Works/temporary traffic lights at A20 end are sched- uled to finish Friday, thankfully.” It provoked a flurry of replies. Lesley Pitcher wrote: “Too many houses being built in the Maidstone area, roads can't cope any more, non-stop roadworks so frustrating have to plan ahead even for a local short journey, tookmean hour to get to a hospital appointment which should have been a 15min journey, extra traffic lights, why?” Denise Kocak added: “It's horren-


dous, no thought about hospital staff and patients trying to get to the hos-


pital, idiots at the council.” And Darren Young commented: “Tracey, you really need to be speak- ing with the planners at T&MBC (Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council) to get them to see sense.... allowing all this development along the Hermitage Lane corridor has made it a total disastrous mess. “Once the site opposite the quarry


has its traffic lights installed (yes more traffic misery) we will all see the true impact of over-develop- ment. As I understand it, the devel- opers’ first of five phases of 500 houses come on stream in August 2017.


“I'm struggling to see any com-


mon sense at all here, it's so sad as it's just driving peopleaway and not uniting communities. All concerned should bow their heads in shame and resign. “The next problem on the horizon


is that yet more planning applica- tions will come forward for the fields by Barming station. I also read in T&MBC's local plan that East Malling Research Centre site is to be turned over to 3,000 houses with an access road off Hermitage Lane, just by the railway bridge. “This is never-ending and will cre-


ate gridlock.”


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