Roads and Traffic - Hartley-Kent: Covering Hartley, Longfield & District

Last updated 1/7/2026

For centuries and more people have had the right to traverse the King's Highway as they travelled from one place to another.  Since 1555 local authorities have been responsible for the maintenance of adopted roads.  

Road classification was introduced in the 1920s as a means of allocating grants for road improvements.  The government has no hard and fast rule as to classification, but the general guidance is:

• 'A' road - will generally be among the widest, most direct roads in  an area, and will be of the greatest significance to through traffic
• 'B' road will still be of significance to traffic (including through traffic), but less so than an A road
• a classified unnumbered road ('C' Road) will be of lower significance and be  of primarily local importance, but will perform a more important  function than an unclassified road
• an unclassified road will generally have very low significance to traffic, and be of only very local importance.

        

Our area has no A roads, but the following are B class:

This depends on whether the road is adopted by the highways authority or not.  All adopted local roads are the responsibility of Kent County Council.   The major trunk roads and motorways in Kent are run by National Highways.

If a road is unadopted then it is possible that each frontager is responsible for the road outside their house, or in some cases a management company may organise repairs for a whole estate (as in the case of the Chase estate at Longfield).

Some highways related matters are not the responsibility of the County Council.  These include litter and flytipping, and bus shelters.  These are managed by the district councils.

You can find out the status of a road at https://www.findmystreet.co.uk/map.

See Kent County Council > Report or track a problem on the road or pavement.

From time to time, traffic surveys have been conducted locally by local and national authorities.  Occasionally a developer will commission a traffic survey to support a planning application.  DFT publish their data free of charge, Kent County Council charges for theirs.

The table below sets out a selection of local traffic surveys.

The Department for Transport publishes detailed figures for road accidents.  However these do not record every accident, only those that involve personal injury that have been reported to the police.  The spreadsheet contains a lot of information about the circumstances of each case.  The data includes map references which have been plotted by www.crashmap.co.uk.

In the 5½ years to 2025 the three parishes of Longfield, Hartley and Ash have seen 97 accidents involving personal injury.  Sadly two of the cases were fatal.

The table below shows data on all personal injury crashes reported to the police in 2020-2025, divided by area and type of accident.