Hartley-Kent: Roads information

Hartley-Kent: Roads Information

Introduction, Highway works 2004/5
Stats - Roadworks, Disability Access, Accidents, Satisfaction with councils

Introduction
Highways and road maintenance is the responsibility of Kent County Council, but in recent years they have set up Highways Units in conjunction with each district council. It is likely however that in the future the county will once again assume full responsibility.

Most roads in Hartley are adopted with some exceptions, including:

Gorse Way (run by local trust)
Manor Drive
Merton Avenue (surfaced in 2004 at the cost of the residents)
Stack Lane

Although no A or B roads run through Hartley, all have a number. Ash Road for example is C252, and as such one of the busiest C roads in the county.

Statistics at a borough level are available from the 2003/4 Annual Performance Review of the Kent Highways Partnership.

Highway Works 2004/5
The following road works are expected for the year ending March 2005:

Church Road (D118) - Grip Fibre dressing between Cherry Trees and Ash Road - Oct/Nov 2004 (£24,767)
Hartley Hill (D152) - Grip Fibre dressing for whole road - Oct/Nov 2004 (£13,733)
Ash Road (C252) - Mini roundabout at Wellfield junction, stalled as of Sept 2004 while alternative scheme is devised (£33,000)

Roadworks
Drivers have a good chance of coming across roadworks in Kent. The public utilities alone had Kent's roads up 42,600 times in 2003, a rise of 1%. Between them they had 3,200 roadworks in Sevenoaks District in 2003, about the same as the previous year. While in Dartford and Gravesend the figures were about 2,100. In all councils check about 1 in 3 of these roadworks and in 3.7% of cases, they found faults requiring further repairs.

When it comes to the authority's own repairs only half of projects in Kent start within 4 weeks of the programmed date, although in Maidstone every project met this target, with Sevenoaks area second at 75%.

Disability Access
The good news here is that Sevenoaks claims to have facilities for the mobility impaired at all its pedestrian crossings.

Road Accidents
Overall in Kent the number of deaths and serious injuries on the road fell 10% from the previous year, while the number of lesser injuries also fell by 6%. They put this down to local eduction, crash remedial schemes and speed cameras.

Borough	Year	Killed/Seriously Injured	Slightly injured
Sevenoaks	2003	59	330
.	2002	82	385
.	2001	73	415
.Dartford	2003	37	340
.	2002	49	350
.	2001	52	400
Gravesend	2003	33	265
.	2002	48	315
.	2001	44	325

NB: all figures are approximate as the report only has bar charts.

Public Satisfaction
Nationally we are not satisfied with road maintenance. In all there is a net dissatisfaction of 14% with the state of the roads and Kent as a whole is fairly close to the national average. After being one of the most unpopular authorities in 2002, Sevenoaks is now one of the best with a minus 6% popularity rating with the public. However the parish councils of the borough are not so happy with a minus 20% score. Sevenoaks got more compliments (65) than any other authority, while you are most likely to get a quick reply if you write to Dartford council. Interestingly the public view Ashford as by far the best the authority for the state of the roads, but the local parish councils view it as one of the worst!

Those who were very dissatisfied with Kent's roads were the 1,413 insurance claimants (105 in Sevenoaks district), who between them claimed £1.6 million from the authority in 2003, but half of them were rejected. The county has a target of dealing with claims in 18 days, but in Sevenoaks only 70% were completed in this time.