People living in Sittingbourne say they feel trapped in their homes as roads works and new housing developments cause daily congestion.
They're caught in the crossfire as the government set housing targets leaving local authorities to deal with the consequences.
Also in today's podcast, thousands of NHS dental procedures have been cancelled in Medway over the last two years with more than 1.1 million not performed.
It comes as half of all dentists based in the Towns say they won’t do any more NHS work due to financial pressures, “too much bureaucracy” and difficulty with recruiting and retaining staff.
A dead rat has been found decomposing in the kitchen of a popular sushi restaurant in Canterbury.
They were forced to stop service immediately and given a damning one-star food hygiene rating.
Swalecliffe has been named as one of the places in the county most affected by sewage spills in the last 12 months.
New figures from the Environment Agency show there were more than 11 spills there - you can hear from Sally Burtt-Jones from SOS Whitstable.
And a Kent couple who are celebrating their 70th wedding anniversary share their secrets to a long and happy marriage.
Ron and Phyllis Wills say they've barely spent a day apart since they met in 1953.
10. Kent Online News. News You Can Trust. This is the Kent Online Podcast. Kate Faulkner. Hello. I hope you're okay. Thank you for downloading today's podcast on Wednesday, March 27th. Our top story today, there are calls for a new bypass around sitting born in a bid to ease traffic congestion in the town centre. Residents say the amount of homes being built there is causing the problem along with ongoing roadworks, a major rebuild of the stock we run about on the 8249 started in January. 2022, Darren Wilkins works in the town centre. If I drive in from Chatham, it's usually getting from Chatham to sitting born. It's quicker than actually getting from the start of London Road into the centre of sitting born to actually park. It can take me 20 minutes, half hour to get through there. It's ridiculous. And then obviously during the day, we go out on work and we've got to get in and out of sitting born and it can put so much time on our jobs. Sometimes a lot we're getting there to do the work and then get back in again. But it's getting to the point that I will prefer to get the training, even with the slight delays on there. Actually, I know I'm going to get to work more on time than trying to drive in from Chatham. So it's really bad. Can I imagine it's paying for the train extra money you're talking about to get to work or how does it work out for you? Yeah, I pay for that every day. We do a short week and a long week. On a short week, that's four days in. I'll just play a daily ticket. But on a long week, which is six days, I'll do a week ticket because it saves money. But obviously still paying extra to get to work rather than just driving in and parking in some of the cheaper car parks. So you're having to actually re-plan your whole day around this traffic situation. How long has this been a problem for you? Well, over year now, I'd say. Well, over year. And it's even worse since I started doing the Stockbury roundabout. That's the biggest thing because obviously my journey is the M2. And as during the working day, a lot of our works in my style as well. Obviously, it's down there to go down the hill and it's just, yeah. We have to do a lot of planning about where we're going and making sure we're grouping our customers and making sure we're just making the best of our efforts to get out. This is running down the rain into one job and coming back again. It's just not. Not that simple. No, not that simple. So before this traffic was an issue, how long on a good day would it take for you to do that route that you're doing now? Well, the home journey, I could use you to do that on a good, clear route, 20 to 30 minutes. And then it's worse. It's worse. It can take me an hour. So that's where you don't know. Basically, how long it's going to take? That's why we're the trainers. I know it might be a few minutes, but I will get here in time to get to walk through the door and open up before I open in time. Do you think that, like, what is the solution? Do you think there is one? Or is it the fact that once it's done, will it be good? I'm hoping once the work's done, I do it. I think some of the one way system around here hasn't helped. Constant road work's only a two. Always digging up and it seems to be in the same place. And very often, the same utility is digging up when they were like a week or so ago. It's this whole point they all meant to do jobs together, doesn't seem to happen. A lot of it is the roadworks and the temperature, like, it's a proper overnight. Or during the day, causing problems. And then when they were talking about doing a bypass road, eight years ago, going around, sitting born and missing it. Obviously, that never happened. Caroline Gower grew up in Sitting Born and says the town has changed a lot. So, obviously, we're sitting born. You grew up here. What have the traffic been like since you've come back? How has it changed? It's a lot worse. I mean, it takes about half an hour to get across town, whereas before I was just sitting, I just went down to them. I kept at home and came back and it just, sitting at the traffic lights for about 10 minutes. Just trying to get across that junction, whereas 10 years ago, probably took about half the time. Everything's taking longer. How about impacting you, you know, planning in your day when you need to do things? Well, it is. I mean, I need to go around and see my dad now. And obviously, I'm just thinking it's going to take me ages because he lives in Merston. So, I've got to go either around Eurolink or up there. And I'm sort of looking at the traffic going back there. It's going to take probably a good half hour to get here to Merston. And I could probably walk in about the same time. Because I walked there from the station before and it takes about a half hour walking. So, no, it's not. But that's... Do you know why the traffic is sort of worse when people develop into what is it? I think, yeah, when they feel... They've built so many more houses and they haven't done anything to the roads. It's the same roads. If not, it's... There's more traffic lights, I think, than it ever was. It takes longer. Can we just say there is too much traffic on the road? Yeah. And just not... I think it's even worse at the moment because obviously you've got all the work on the AT49. People trying to get our tomatoes going on the AT2 and not going, you know, because the M2 is normally closed. Because there's normally an accident on it and it's too small at its own. Yeah, it's getting born to change my life. Yeah, it has. Yeah. And it does need to be another junction, I think, on the CM2. From, you know, I think they're never going to do it sort of at the back of that child or something like that. Yeah, no. I think that would probably be a good thing to take a bit of the traffic out of the town. Yeah. Yeah. It has changed a lot, yeah. Darren and Caroline there were both speaking to reporter Ellie Hodgson. I caught up with Simon Finlay, who's also done a lot of work on this story. Is there a sense from people living and sitting born that this is the new normal? And we can sort of say goodbye to the easy-flowing traffic that people once knew? I don't think the new normal would necessarily be something that they want to get used to, but it is something they're certainly having to put up with. I think in the piece that I wrote, I said that it was almost with a sense of grief, that what was considered normal is no longer there. But for other people, it's just a sense of this seething, impotent rage that they feel because it's something that they have nothing they can do about it. From their point of view, do they see any light at the end of the tunnel? Well, not really, because once one set of houses has been sort of forced on them by the government, the government intends to force even more. And then when they're built, there'll be even more again because there is this housing shortage that the government has identified, but the people who live in sitting born, and elsewhere in Kent will say that most of the people who are moving into these sort of executive-style states are basically just people who are moving in from London because local people can't actually afford to buy them. You've also been speaking to some of the local councillors in the area. What are their thoughts on having to meet these housing targets? Well, generally, they have the same kind of viewpoint. The targets are too high, and if you build houses on that scale, you've got to have the roads to actually help, you know, take those volumes of new traffic and in sitting born, there's talk of a north and south relief road, which would basically sort of take away a lot of that traffic. But the feeling is that by the time a relief road in both ends of the time was built, there would be so much traffic that there would be of barely no use anyway. So it's kind of, this is the problem. The general feeling is that there's just too many houses and the locality cannot take the volume of traffic. It can't provide the school places. It can't provide the NHS capacity and it can't provide things like GPs as well. It sounds as though this relief road is being offered a sort of a solution to the problem, maybe a carrot being dangled. It's going to get better because there is going to be this relief road. But as you say, it's by the time that goes in, it's going to have very little impact. Are there any other solutions on the horizon that you can see? Well, the only other solution that there could be would be that they stop building houses. That's one solution. Instead of maybe sort of focus the attention, this is what people say, is that rather than building homes to sell, that you buy homes that people can afford to buy or can afford to rent affordable housing, social housing, council housing and that sort of thing. But with the relief roads, just to bring it back to that, in order to get a relief road or two relief roads for the sitting-born area, you'd have to take 10,000 houses and 10,000 houses would probably equate to about 30,000 more cars. Can't online news. A man has been charged following two armed robberies in Swan Lake. Carl Kainar is accused of holding up a dominoes in the high street with an imitation firearm before threatening staff at an Azda petrol station with a knife and stealing cash. The 40-year-old, who has no fixed address, remains in custody of head of a court appearance next month. It'll never be known what happened in the moments before a crash in Ashford that killed a 37-year-old man. The van, Danny Humphrey from Essex, was driving, ended up on the wrong side of the A28 great chart bypass last October and collided with a lorry. An inquest is heard, there were no defects with the vehicle or issues with the road surface. Figures just out show a 54% increase in the number of sewage spills across England last year. There were more than 14,000 storm overflows. Here in Kent, the highest number of spills was in Swale Cliff between Whistable and Hearne Bay, which saw 118 spills which totalled more than 923 hours. It's being blamed on the wet weather. Water companies say they're investing to improve the network. Saliba Jones is from SOS, Whistable. People choose to live here in Whistable by the sea to have that incredible health and well-being benefit that you can get from living by water. Some people here make their living from it. Some people just use it for pleasure swimming, paddleboarding, jet skiing, whatever it might be. Even this year, I know the statistics of Alaska, but from the data we've seen so far this year, only two and every three days have actually been usable with the water so far this year. The impact is severe. A lot of people use the water for mental health benefits, including myself. There's a social element to it, but there's also a fantastic feeling of well-being when you're able to get into the water. It's one of the few things in life which is currently free to walk to the end of the road and get in the sea. Having that taken away from us has a real negative impact on well-being, on the local economy. Of course, under the water, which we're not able to see quite so clearly, is the impact on biodiversity. I imagine it's going to impact on tourism as well, particularly as we come into the warmer weathers, people thinking that they're going to get away to the seaside. They see a story like this, they might think otherwise, they might go, "No, I won't swim in the sea because it's full of sewage." For sure, it's a common story all around the country at the moment. Potentially, this is going to have an impact on international tourism with people not wanting to come to the UK because our rivers and the seas are so dirty. On a local level, I think for people that have awareness of what's happening, there's certainly a reluctance to go into the sea. We have lots of messages from people visiting with St Du Bo asking us if it's safe to swim. All we're able to do is point them in the direction of southern waters. Apparently, real-time reporting, which is sometimes not that real-time, to tell them to check. Of course, there's a service against sewage app, which you can download free, which will also give information regarding recent sewage releases that can help people to make a decision about whether or not they're willing to enter the water. You touched on it a little bit before, as you said, water companies are saying, last year we've seen record amounts of rainfall, and that has been a main contributor to the reason why we're seeing so many spills. Do you disagree? The system was set up a very long time ago and obviously privatised over 30 years ago now. The system does take rainwater and sewage flow. In wet weather, yes, the flow to the treatment works will be massively increased. However, this is not a new story. Over the last 30 years, there's been plenty of opportunity for the water companies to invest in their infrastructure, which would then mean that this increased amount of rain has been predicted for a long time as has population growth. Those systems that might have been built 50 or 60 years ago were not built to cope with the current weather patterns and the current amount of individuals needing to use those wastewater treatment plants. However, there's been plenty of time to fix the problem. It's looking now over the last 30 years, instead of spending money keeping up to date with making sure that the capacity is there, the water companies have instead been taking profit and rewarding shareholders. Now that there's so much fuss being kicked up about it, it's increasing the amount of our bills to pay for this problem to be resolved, which essentially feels like we've paid twice. We've paid the first time and that money's been taken off as profit, and now we're being asked to pay again to solve the problem. So it's understandable that a lot of people are getting very angry about this. Kent Online News. He's been revealed half of dentists based in Medway say they won't do NHS work. Almost 80 in the towns have been questioned and blamed financial pressures, too much red tape and difficulty recruiting and training staff. Dr Alfred Colosven owns the High Street Medical Dental Practice in Gillingham. Before we used to get paid for your right term, that means if a patient comes in and needs free fillings, you used to get paid for all free fillings. Since 2006 when they changed the contract, it's a UDA contract that means if a patient needs free fillings, you get paid for one single item, for one filling. That's when literally the majority of dentists like myself would over 20 years of experience, they moved more into the private sector, and that's what actually brought the waiting lists to the level that they are today, because if I'm going to ask you to work for three days and get paid for one day, I don't think that's suitable for anyone. So in the last six months indeed the government tried to change the contract. It's a little bit too little and too late by increasing the value of the UDA's and making sure that new patients have been seeing within a location. They get paid more than normal regular patients. The problem that we've got is the fact that there is loads of dentists who came from abroad, and they obviously qualified, and the governing body, the GEDC, takes quite a long time to process the application in order to be registered with the GEDC to be able to perform dentistry in here, and they work at the moment as a dental hygienist or a dental therapist. So the only option that I can see, because in every sector nowadays we have issues with recruiting, when the GEDC will be able to process this application faster and allowing them to be able to be registered as dentists, that will actually increase the number of dentists that will be able to provide NHS dentistry. A Beth Isden resident has been fined £400 after household waste was found dumped in a country lane. The suspect admitted to paying a complete stranger to dispose of the rubbish, which was flight tip in Shaddox Hurst from April 1st. The penalty for flight tip will increase from a maximum £400 to £1,000. Residents need over-of-hitout at Vandals who have been burning library books. The charred debris was found strewn along railway bridge pathway in river around a dozen books had been either torched or torn up.
