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What was a safe wide road with good sightlines, no hold-ups, plenty of room for buses to enter and exit the bus station has been changed overnight. Bus stops have been moved away from the bus shelter and there are three planters blocking the view of drivers exiting various buildings. Apparently, Maidstone Borough Council and Kent County Council worked together on this “temporary” scheme. Really? It is obvious that no experienced highways officer visited the site, or did they? Someone needs to be held responsible for putting in a major scheme without consulting residents and business. I have contacted my three local councillors, my two county councillors and only MBC’s Cllr English has replied, telling me there will be a site meeting. We all want safe cycle lanes, and the Maidstone Cycling Forum say they will make sure the schemes are examples of best practice. I have cycled all my life and I can assure the forum that this scheme is dangerous to cyclists and to pedestrians. Eileen Riden, King Street, Maidstone


No hasty re-organisation


I REFER to Dennis Fowle’s Mail Marks piece in the September edition regarding local government re-organisation and the potential scrapping of borough councils. We have been here before. When I was chair of governors at Maidstone Grammar School around 1995/6, there was considerable discussion in the last days of John Major’s government about the abolition of county councils and the creation of more “unitaries”. This would have completed the process through which Metropolitan boroughs had come into being in the 1970s and streamline so-called local government across the land. I was involved in discussions with the KCC Education hierarchy of the day supporting them in their quest for survival.


Then of course the Tories lost the 1997 election and the Blair Government dropped local government reorganisation well down its agenda. (One might also make the point that grammar schools did rather better under a Labour government nancially than they had done under the


Thatcher/Major administrations) I think it would be disastrous for a partially thought-through policy to be pushed through in haste. Right now, the nation is grappling with COVID-19 and with considerable uncertainty over Brexit, the last thing we need at a local level is the sort of disruption caused by a far reaching and costly restructure (whether that be a unitary involving Maidstone with Dartford or Tunbridge Wells or whoever). One could almost argue, cynically, that this could be “slipped in” whilst we are distracted by more immediate issues. The KCC and other local elections next May thus become tremendously important and the media must raise the importance of re-organisation issues, so voters are under no misapprehension as to what could be on the table. Richard Ratcliffe, Maidstone


Pipes can’t take the traffic


ANYONE who was caught up in the misery caused by the temporary works on Penfold Hill at Leeds to repair yet another leaking South East Water pipe last month, will be justly frustrated and irritated. As Downs Mail recently pointed out, this private utility company allows 80 million litres of water to escape from its piping every day, so it will evoke little sympathy while passing prots to its shareholders. However, South East Water can only repair/replace so much of its ageing network of pipes at once, so to read its workers were being abused is a disgrace. Nor was there any excuse for drivers to mount the verges and drive around the works to avoid the misery elsewhere. But these are the extremes people are, literally, being driven to. It seems that everywhere you drive these days, there is a leak bubbling up. This may or may not caused by excessive traffic, but it seems it has worsened since the housebuilding in the borough stepped up. Yet the Lib Dem-led coalition, who run Maidstone Borough Council, have not managed to commence much of what is needed at the very least. Is it because there is an ideological or political disconnect with the Tory-run county council’s highway authority? We


THIS is what Downs Mail readers said on our Facebook page about the rush hour chaos in Leeds due to a South East Water road closure…


Phil Kennedy: The water main damage is probably linked to the number of HGVs that drive through the village, despite being banned .... Add in drivers who ig- nore road closed signs and you have this chaos.


Michelle Mackey: They should have built the by-pass before building all those houses!


Paul McCarthy: SE Water has so many leaks in Leeds that it looks like a patchwork quilt! It’s a


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are assured they are talking, but nothing seems to get done. MBC’s answer to the possibility of 34,000 homes in Maidstone that no one wants is to suggest people adopt modal shift – ie take the bus, walk or cycle. Are they having a laugh?


The chaos and damage caused to back roads in Leeds, Broomeld, Langley, Otham, Downswood and Chegworth cannot be allowed to happen again. It is unfair on the residents, the drivers who had to nd alternative routes to a road that should not be used as a main


thoroughfare, to the environment and the roads which cannot withstand this level of traffic.


To be honest, it brings us back to the subject of a Leeds-Langley relief road, but this authority shows little inclination to pursue that either. The only thing this administration is bent on is the “if-you- can’t-beat-them-join-them” approach of becoming the “master developer” of a massive housing development at Lenham. Look how popular this has proved to be. Cllr Eddie Powell (Independent), Maidstone Borough Council


Let’s see housing emails


I READ with some amusement, or bemusement, your report on the extraordinary number of emails passed between Bellway Homes and top officers at Maidstone Borough Council on the subject of the ultimately defeated, housing development at Church Road, Otham. More than 2,500 emails in 16 months by one search parameter, and nearly 1,000 by another. What on earth do they say to one another? It would be naïve to believe that council officers do not have conversations with applicants for sites. They must. But it might be interesting if the Chapman Avenue Residents’ Association narrowed the dates to, say, a couple of days leading up to any of the vital votes on the Church Road proposal. It may well pass the test of time/expense used to defeat CARA’s original Freedom of Information request. Then, we might get a avour of what these individuals had to say to one another. C Patterson, via email


nightmare for locals. Get this relief road done.


Lissi Hall: This is because the water for Maidstone has had to be diverted, which has increased the pressure, resulting in lots of leaks around Maidstone.


Nicky Littlejohn: Don’t blame South East Water... regardless of the road closure this is a common occurrence due to the weight of traffic on the roads....


John Ryan: South East Water really are not fit for purpose!


Kelly Slythe: This was a nightmare Friday evening! The traffic was unreal.


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