Furious residents say their estate near Ashford still smells like “rotten eggs” - despite a water company spending £4.3 million upgrading a nearby sewage works.
Some say the foul stench still stops them from opening windows in the summer, while others even have to stop their children from playing outside.
Also in today’s podcast, a cash-strapped garden centre is set for a £3 million overhaul complete with a larger restaurant in a bid to attract more customers.
The owner says he’s struggling to make a profit at the “outdated” site in Folkestone.
A shopper says she was left “disgusted” after discovering something that looked like an animal’s poo in her salad.
She had almost finished her lunch, which she had bought from Sainsbury’s when she noticed the odd lump.
A teenager and a “frightened” seven-year-old girl had to be rescued after they were found a mile offshore on a paddleboard.
The RNLI was called out to Minster on Sheppey over the weekend.
And in football it was another weekend to remember for Gillingham who are now sitting top of the League Two table.
You can hear from boss Mark Bonner on the important the point from their nil-all draw.
We'll see you in the next episode of the episode. Kent Online News. News you can trust. This is the Kent Online Podcast. Kate Faulkner. Hello. Thank you for downloading today's podcast on Monday, August 27th. Coming up today, we'll hear from the Tundbridge MP on why he thinks he should be the next leader of the Conservative Party. We'll also hear from the Jills Boss after another League 2 performance over the weekend. But first, taking a look at our top story today, people living on an estate in Ashford say it still smells like rotten eggs, despite work to upgrade a nearby sewage plant. Lucy has the details for the Kent Online Podcast. Residents of the Little Burton Estate say the fowl smell, like rotten eggs or fish, has been plaguing them for years, but it's gradually been getting worse. For some, it stops them opening their windows, even in the summer months, while others have resorted to stopping their children from playing outside. One man who's lived there for 20 years, described it as unbearable and says it's so bad it can make you feel sick, or give you a headache. More than 100 people have now signed a petition calling on southern water to resolve the issue, as it continues to greatly diminish their quality of life. And has there been a response from southern water? Well, the company claimed they've carried out £4.3 million worth of upgrades and improvements to the nearby sewage works. They say their investment at Ashford wastewater treatment works in Kennington has already made a massive difference. The company believe other factors could be contributing to the smell, such as muck spreading and low water levels in the river's stower that may generate the fish smell in the summer. A team is also investigating the building design on the Little Burton Estate, as it says the environment agency has confirmed all the new equipment that the sewage plant is operating correctly. Bosses say workers at the site are now using a new live-action monitoring system and odour management plan to keep on top of the issue, and further technology has been installed as stop gases involved in the treatment process from escaping into the air. Sounds like they've invested quite a lot into addressing the problem. Is that enough for the residents of the estate? Well, residents say the severity of the odour varies depending on which part of the estate people live in. While some people acknowledge the work done by southern water to fix the problem, there are others who say more needs to be done and that the persistent smell is forcing them to consider moving out of the area, as spokesman for Ashford Borough Council says the authority is monitoring the site with the EA and working closely with southern water about odour complaints. Thanks, Lucy. Kent Online News Police have released pictures of a man they want to speak to after reports of an attempted sex attack on a woman in sheerness. Officers were called to a disturbance in Alma Street late on Sunday night. You can see the CCTV images at Kent Online. A violent sex offender from Medway has been jailed following crimes committed over two decades. Oliver Marriott pleaded guilty to various charges, including assault and controlling and coercive behaviour. The 33-year-old from Cuckston has been locked up for 18 years. A snotland man who sent explicit messages to a young girl has avoided being sent straight to prison. Bradley Battle was 19 when he targeted the victim and later Googled whether he could get into trouble for it. The 21-year-old now lives in Lakeside, has been given a suspended sentence in order to complete a sex offender treatment programme. Kent Online News A sitting-born man has denied causing the death of a cyclist in a crash while over the drug drive limit. 71-year-old David Prentice died following the collision in Wormshill in October 2022. Danny Gibson, who's 37 and from Oast Court, refutes being in the car at the time. He's due to go on trial next April. A man's been sentenced after breaking another man's jaw outside a nightclub in Canterbury. Liam Jones punched the victim following a row at Chemistry in May last year. The 27-year-old from Overbrook Road in Gloucester has been given a suspended sentence. They'll also have to wear an alcohol tag and do 200 hours of unpaid work. Five-fighters have now left the scene of a recycling centre blaze near Dartford more than 40 hours after it started. Crews were called to the Pinden site in Longfield on Saturday night and finished operations yesterday evening. No one was hurt and it's unclear how the fire started. Two children have been rescued after drifting out to sea on a paddleboard at Minster on the Isle of Shepey. Five-boat crews and the Coast Guard helicopter were called on Sunday afternoon. A teenager and seven-year-old were found a mile offshore and brought to safety. A family of five also had to be rescued from a cliff at Warden Point after getting cut off by the tide on Friday. Its claim road works around Maidstone have been left as a dog's dinner after a key project was shelved. Work on the A249 at the edge of the Kent Medical Campus was put on hold by Council bosses earlier this year when it emerged the cost would exceed the £11.4 million budget. Our local Democracy reporter Simon Finley has been hearing more from resident Ian Stewart. The traffic at the roundabout can't be horrendous and the scheme to enlarge it with extra lanes has come to a halt and the problem is that that will take some time to be completed. So matters will only get worse and by abandoning the site as can be seen it looks deadly and can only get worse as the winter arrives and makes it look worse and it will deteriorate just like a house will deteriorate if it's not looked after. And what is the, in the bigger picture, what's the way, what would be the thing that could be done to make this whole thing better? In the immediate area to improve that area the completion of the proposed scheme will work but as we all know it will just merely transfer the problem of the parking and the queues further down new cut to the A220 at the bottom of Ashford Road and that is where there will be a tremendous problem because the road is in such a position it cannot easily be widened and involves a railway bridge for example. Okay so but in the much bigger picture of the borough wide picture what would help to ease the overall traffic situation? If it was possible to have a further bypass elsewhere south of the town or east of the town so the lorries from Park Wood and various other areas around there do not have to come but can turn towards other Junction 8 or a bypass that will give them access to Junction 7 without going through residential areas which they could only do now using Leeds and New Cut Road. KCC say by going back to the competitive market a more cost effective solution could be found with a new contract up in the meantime Balsa say they're working with utility companies and owners of adjacent land to carry out off-road works for the surveys and investigations to make sure the project is ready to resume. Kent Online News Conservative leader hopeful Tom Suginhart has been telling us why he should be the party's new leader. The position is up for contention after Rishi Sunak announced his resignation after the general election Kent Online reporter Robert Boddy and Gabriel Morris from the local Democracy Reporting Service caught up with Tom while he was in Chatham. "Everyone's got to stand on their record and my record is of delivery on operations in Iraq and Afghanistan of standing up to dictators in parliament being sanctioned by Russia, China and Iran because I did so and of actually delivering some fundamental changes on national security laws that meant that we were able to arrest and charge more Russian and Chinese agents in this country over the two years that I was security minister than the previous decade." "Here in Medway and specifically in other previously Tory constituencies a lot of voters have sworn away for it to later some delay before a lot to reform. How do you win those? Well the truth is most actually stayed away. What we need to do is we need to be bringing back Tory voters from all parts of course we need those who chose reform to come back. We also need those who chose labour or the Lib Dems or those who stayed away to come back. What we need to do is offer a proper conservative agenda that makes sure that we are investing in people. That means investing in belonging, investing in place and giving people that sense of identity, that pride in our community that is so important." "In the three Medway constituencies and here in Chatham they had Tory MPs for 14 years and particularly here in Chatham it was an 18,000 majority that's now a 2,000 labour majority. I mean that's a massive swing. How do you, is it in our case that people were just staying away from the Tories rather than voting for something else?" Well that's exactly right that's exactly what happened. People chose to stay away and that was because a lot of people and I understand why we're angry with the last few years of infighting and failing to deliver. Now what we've got to do is we've got to unite and we've got to rebuild trust with the British people and the way we do that is by delivering. We deliver by party reform of course but we deliver in our councils and across the United Kingdom and we demonstrate that commitment to the British people. That is that promise of delivery in the future. That's why I'm not standing to be leader of the Conservative Party because that's what we need to deliver in this country. "But wasn't the problem that a lot of the promises are towards the end of the last Conservative government. It was just didn't believe that you were going to deliver them. Haven't you got to massively turn the tide on that?" That's absolutely right. We do have to turn the tide on that and that's exactly why I'm standing to be leader of the Conservative Party because I have got a record of delivery, a record of delivery on operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, a record of delivery in parliament and a record of delivery in cabinet and standing on that record I want to invest in the changes that we need not just in the Conservative Party but in the country to make sure we get that revolutionary movement that actually brings change, brings opportunity and makes sure that this economy, this country works for everyone. Now if you do become the next Conservative leader what would that mean for your constituents back in Tumbridge? Would you still have eyes on issues there? My commitment to Tumbridge is absolutely without question. My home, it's where I care about and of course I will make sure that I serve the community of Tumbridge as hard and well as I have done for many, many years. What direction does the Conservative Party need to go in now? The Conservative Party needs to go in a conservative direction. It needs to remember that we're the party of the British people when we identify and when we support the nature that this country really needs which is that sense of space, that patriotism and that purpose that really brings us together and that's exactly what I'll do. The new leader will be elected in November. Sainsbury say they're investigating after a woman found what looks like animal poo in her salad. It was bought at the Pepper Hill store in North Fleet. The customer was reportedly offered a £10 voucher and told to return the product for testing. A struggling garden centre in Folkestone is getting a £3 million overhaul to try and attract more customers. A revamp at the Grovewell site will include a bigger restaurant, new car park and children's play area. It's set to create more than 40 jobs. A public planning inquiry is going to look into reports of unauthorised buildings in ancient woodland near Canterbury. Roads have also apparently been constructed on plots of land in Tower Wood in Addisham. Campaigners say the area should be protected. One of the owners insists he's using his cabin as a base to plant thousands of trees and wildlife meadows. The organisers of the Shorn the Sheep Trail through Maidstone are still hoping to reach their fundraising goals, despite two of the sculptures being vandalised. It's been organised by the heart of Kent Hosper, who will auction off each Shorn next month with the aim of raising £250,000. However, two will be missing after being severely damaged. Rachel Street is the CEO of the charity. Just absolutely heartbroken, beginning of this week, when we found out that two of the students have been so badly vandalised that they're pretty much irreparable and won't make it onto the auction. It's not only the team that have worked on this for the last 18 months, it's the artists that have spent many, many hours painting very detailed and intricate designs. It's the companies that have sponsored those Shorn's, and of course, it's the community of Maidstone, who are also just as heartbroken as we are that they got vandalised. But we will do what we can to kind of- Sorry, carry on, sorry. I was going to say, we will do what we can to repair them if we can. We don't think we're going to be able to repair them in time for the auction. And as you said, we're aiming to raise £250,000 at the auction, and those two sculptures make up about £10,000 of that. So we're hoping that people rally and help us meet that target, even though we're two Shorn's down. Absolutely. We're best of luck with that. Can you just remind us as well where that money will be going towards at the hospice? Because $250,000 sounds like quite a lot. $250,000 is a significant amount of money for heartbroken hospice. Over a year, we need to raise over £5 million to run our services, where we provide care and support for people who are living with a terminal illness and who are facing the end of their lives. So this money will go to that care and that support that the hospice provides. The trail wraps up on the 15th of September. Kent Online News. Details have emerged of the final phase of an 800-home development in Aylesford. The Poppies Estate is being built on land between the A20 London Road and Hermitage Lane. Students use to include a new primary school and doctor surgery as well as a link road to help cope with extra traffic. It's been planned to build a cafe in Diehl, could cause traffic chaos. Applications have been put in for a new site next to Sanddown Castle Community Garden. There's been a mixed reaction with some raising concerns over parking. Controversial plans for 170 new homes in the Ashford have been withdrawn. Developers wanted to build the estate at Cotton Hill on the edge of Ham Street. Applications have been dropped after more than 600 objections from residents. Now, hundreds of people have turned up for the funeral of a judo coach from Faverschen who inspired generations of young people for more than 50 years. Trevor Davies started out in the sport when he was 11 and later began teaching it at schools across the county. He died at the age of 77 and a service was held on Monday. It comes in tributes being paid to a cricketer from Maidstone following his sudden death at the age of 42. Vijay Kumar suffered a heart attack earlier this month, shortly after returning from a holiday to see family in India. More than £16,000 has been raised to help transport his body back to his home country and to support his family. Kent Online News. A football club in Thanet has told us they're struggling to keep up in the rise in popularity of women's football. East Kent FC have set a crowdfunding goal of £5,000 to buy new goals for their girls' team to use next season. Richard Parker is the club's girls development lead. We saw an opportunity to be able to expand the club's girls' provision in sandwich and so I simply ran some open trials, invited girls down and we had unbelievably more than 50 girls coming in April last year over the course of two Saturdays. From that we were able to establish another girls' team to add to the two that were already in existence and by the end of last season we had five girls' teams plus the 12 boys and we've seen a significant growth in girls' football provision but because the game is growing so fast there's a real pressure on the availability of facilities and because we were struggling to recruit we made a decision to invite the girls to come and train and play matches here in sandwich at Sir Roger Mamwood School. The surface is fantastic but facilities are great and I think the parents saw the benefits of being able to play on such a fantastic surface because it helps the girls with the quality of their football and our ability as coaches to be able to develop them. So here we are in mid-July, two months from the start of the new season and we find ourselves in a situation where we need two sets of goals. It's great to have the facilities but we haven't got all of the infrastructure that we need. I'm a big believer that we can't keep going to parents and carers and asking them to put their hands in their pocket. It's really important that we're able to provide the basic infrastructure for their girls to be able to play football. They're already having to fund aspects of the club through monthly subscriptions to cover our insurances, our accreditations, affiliations, kit, referees, pitch hire. I simply don't think it's right to ask them. So we decided to do a fundraising exercise, DiPato in the water, we've never done it before, I've never done it before and we're having an incredible response. They've raised just over a thousand pounds so far. You'll be able to tap in and out using contactless payments at more railway stations in Kent from next month. Pay as you go ticketing is being expanded to seven oaks and five surrounding stations including Otford and Dunton Green. It'll be available from the 22nd of September head to Kent online to see a picture of a water spout that's been spotted at the Kent coast. A sailor took a video of the twister a couple of miles off Hyth Beach yesterday morning. Kent's online sport. Football now and Gilliam are top of the league two table after three games. They start of their season with a win over Carlisle, followed by a victory away at Morkham. Sunday's match at Fleetwood Town ended in a Neil Nell draw. Gill's manager Mark Bonner says he's happy to have picked up a point. Yeah, it's a really good point. It's one we're definitely going to respect because it was as tough a game as we thought it would be. Those are really hard for us. In the first half we couldn't really get out. We didn't get enough pressure high up the pitch and I think the biggest problem today is we turned them all over so quickly we were therefore just relying in fairly singular moments on counter-attacks rather than enough periods of control. I did felt we finished the strongest, looked them more likely to get something in the last 10 minutes and they probably went a little bit more protective in the way they changed the team and I thought we chased the game really well in the end and I loved that until he's trying win but I didn't think there was enough of that confidence throughout large parts of the game and we made it a really tough afternoon for ourselves and they're good enough to do that to you anyway. I think they've got some brilliant players caused us lots of problems. I think we've called this game in the next couple as a real marker for where we are and we can see the the work that we've got to do because they put in some some really good performances and causes some problems. Having said that to come away again and keep a clean sheet and defend the box as well as we did at times we might have got a bit fortunate on a couple but I think they did too. We had a couple of really good moments that we might have taken and been a bit more clinical on. We're certainly really happy to take to take something away on the back of last week as well. You can see how physically taxing the last two weeks has been to the boys but they're just ground out, stuck with it, got through some really tough moments in the game and we're really happy to take it. I think if you'd have said before the couple of weeks when you look at those fixtures and you know the Swansea game got thrown in as well that is an absolute beast to have those three games in quick succession and it's taken its toll definitely and we know that we are a little bit light with players at the moment because we're waiting for a few to come back but we'll get better which we need to. The level of the top teams is high and we might be sitting at the top of the league at the moment and we might be fancied by lots but I think there's a long way for us to go to be a match for those top ones at the moment and some of the players have got to raise the level quickly because we've got to be a better team with the ball and not just be so reliant on counter-attacks but I am also caveating that with the difficulty of the last couple of weeks, the physical toll that that's taken and we've played two teams that were in league one last year and are opening three games and they might have had a tough season last year but they're a long way ahead of us in the cycle and with the level that they were at last year so good for us to take something from the game and we'll be very very happy on the bus despite the last being an absolute shattered fair play for them for their work ethic and togetherness in the last week. They'll be hosting Chesterfield in their next match on Saturday. To tell us now when Ken's Emma Radicarno gets her US Open campaign underway today, she's taking on former Australian Open champion Sophia Kenan in the first round. A 21-year-old from Orpington will be looking for her first win at the Grand Slam in New York since she took the title in 2021 and briefly in cricket if you missed the result over the bank holiday, Kent have lost their latest county championship match. They will be eaten by Worcestershire at an hour bottom of the Division 1 table with only four games left to the season. Next up is a trip to Warwickshire on Thursday. That's all from us today, thanks ever so much for listening. Don't forget, you can follow us on Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok and threads. You can also get the details on the top stories direct to your email each morning by the briefing to sign up. Just head to kentonline.co.uk. News you can trust. This is the Kent Online Podcast. [BLANK_AUDIO]
