Video footage showing people risking their lives at level crossings has been released as part of a major safety campaign.
It's after near misses in Gillingham, Sittingbourne, Faversham, Gravesend and East Farleigh.
Plans to scale back the number of children eligible for special needs places in Kent have been described as 'terrifying' by worried families.
Kent County Council say there's an over-reliance on special school placements and want to change the admissions guidance so they're only for those with the most complex needs.
A Medway man says he's been hounded by a gas company for seven months for a bill that wasn't his.
The property in Rainham was supplied by British Gas who refused to set up Benjamin Robinson as a new customer until the outstanding debt was settled.
One of Kent's new MPs has been chatting about getting used to Westminster - just days after he was preparing for the end of term.
Secondary school teacher Tris Osborne was elected to represent Chatham and Aylesford 10 days ago.
In sport, it was a very disappointing night for England fans.
Gareth Southgate's side were beaten 2-1 by Spain in the final of Euro 2024. Hear from fans who watched the match at the Folkestone Harbour Arm last night.
Gillingham's new manager has admitted his first match in charge wasn't the prettiest.
The Gills drew 0-0 with Millwall in their pre-season friendly at Priestfield yesterday afternoon.
As part of a major safety campaign, it's after near-misses in Gillingham, sitting born Fava Chum grape zen den East Farley, where network rails released CCTV, which you can see today at Kent online. It includes a couple avoiding getting hit by just inches, a truck getting trapped between the safety barriers and two cyclists, crashing in the middle of the tracks. I've been speaking to Gemma Kent, who's the county route risk advisor at Network Rail. We've released it now just ahead of the school holidays. Usually we see a rise during the school holidays with children being, you know, bored, wanting to find something to do, thrill-seeking. So now is a great time to try and capture that for the school holiday start. And can you tell us a bit about what some of the footage shows? This is near-misses involving level crossings. Obviously, we've got a lot of those across the county. Just describe some of the things that you've caught on camera. Yeah, so we see people walking across with push bikes, standing in the crossing, not looking in either direction. We see people with dogs walking across the trespass guards that are at the side of the crossings to protect people from getting onto the railway itself. We see vehicles jumping the red lights weaving around the barriers to avoid waiting for trains. We also see a lot of people. Nowadays, everybody has a mobile phone. Everybody is distracted by a mobile phone. So we see a lot of people looking at their phone instead of looking up to see if a train's approaching or listening to music from their phone with their headphones on so they can't hear trains approaching. Yeah, as I say, some of that footage that you've shared is really quite terrifying. People having incredibly near-misses. It must be awful for a train driver as well to see someone so near to a level crossing, because, well, presumably, they're going quite reasonably quickly. It must be an awful sight for them. Yeah, absolutely. Usually, they can be travelling up to 100 miles an hour. The other thing to bear in mind, when you're driving a car, you can swerve, you can try and move around an object or a person, but you can't do that in a train. You can't swerve. The braking distance is a lot, lot harder than a car as well, so it takes the train a lot further to stop. They're also much higher up, so their visibility, they can't always see directly below, so their visibility is also reduced, so really frightening for drivers, yeah. Can you tell us a bit about some of the different level crossings we have in Kent? Because you mentioned there about cars maybe swerving through the lights, but there are pedestrian ones in particular as well, aren't there? So we have, like you say, the vehicle crossings on roads. We also have a lot of footpath crossings, so the majority of our crossings are actually footpaths, so they'll be on the edges of towns or through the countryside and there is nobody watching them via CCTV like you find on the road crossings, so we really rely on people to do the right thing and stop, look and listen for trains. Some of our crossings we have red and green lights at, which are really simple to understand, if it's a green light, it's go, if it's red and the orderables are going, don't go, so we have a few of those and we're putting in more as well to help, so, and we also have privately owned farm crossings, privately owned access crossings as well that are for farmers to get to their land or people to get to their houses or residents, so we have lots of different types. The footage is truly terrifying, you can see those clips today by heading to kentiline.co.uk Kent Online News. At the top stories for you in today's episode in a woman's chewing court charge with murder after a man went missing in Canterbury. Human remains have been found at a property in St Martin's Road by police searching for 65-year-old Jeremy Rickards. He hasn't been seen since the beginning of June. Maureen Rickards, who's 50 and from the same road, is due to appear before magistrates. A drink driver has been ordered to do unpaid work after crashing into the entrance of a block of flats near Maidstone. Anthony Walton, who now lives in Armitage Close in Who, was driving at almost twice the speed limit when he crashed in bombing before driving off. The 40-year-old has also been given an 18-month driving ban and must complete rehab sessions. A witstable woman says she's grateful to judges for giving her a second chance to stay out of prison following an attack on paramedics. Roma Lawson appeared in court last week for assaulting the emergency workers while high on illegal substances. A 35-year-old who lives in sea sulte has been told she's got three months to clean up and stay out of trouble or face jail time. Now plans to scale back the number of children eligible for special needs places in Kent have been described as terrifying by worried families. Kent County Council say there's an over-reliance on special school placements and what to change the admissions guidance so they're only for those with the most complex needs. Mum of two, Haley Forest, runs Forest Autism Support and has been speaking to Abigail Hook from our colleagues at KMTV. What we need to be clear on is that the schools, what's happening is that we're saying that certain schools are going to change their admission criteria so only the most severe and complex children will be able to have a place there. So my concern mainly and I know a lot of other parents share this concern is what if your child isn't deemed severe and complex or what if they are actually academically able as many children on the autism spectrum are, what's going to happen to those children? What would your solution be for those children who don't fit into a specialist school or don't fit into a mainstream school? What about those children in that gray area in the middle? What would be the suggestion? I'm really worried about those children because I think I'm working with so many families at the moment and parents are either choosing to homeschool or be enforced to homeschool. They're having to leave their employment because they've got children at home that they need to care for. We've got children in that kind of gray area that are struggling with their mental health, they're becoming isolated, they're great at dropping. These are the children that we really need to focus on and these are the children that actually are probably well are going to be most affected by these changes. So the solution really is that we need to upskill or change maybe our mainstream provision. We can't just say all these children are going to need to go into mainstream. There needs to be change around that maybe specialist hubs or SRPs attached to our mainstream schools and it's a lot of work around these so that these children have got alternatives because these children that I work with cannot access big busy mainstream environments, they just not get up for it. And some of the statistics are quite staggering. 20% more EHCPs in Kent than the rest of the country. Why do you think that is? I know it's a really good question I get asked this all the time and I think I'm not sure why. Maybe we demographically have a greater need in this area. It's a really hard one to answer because I know that actually obtaining an education health care plan in Kent is quite difficult. So there are, you know, there are a lot of them that are turned down and parents having to go to tribunal and really fight their cases. Parents feel it's the only way at the moment to get the support that their child deserves a need because maybe there's a problem in school. Usually in a mainstream school where they feel that their child isn't being understood or supported and they feel that that's the only way to kind of get representation for their child. So if we were able to make the needs of those children better, it would probably mean less applications for education health care plans but then that's a whole piece of work that needs to be done around supporting mainstream schools, maybe developing more SRPs, more specialist hubs. And looking forward now to the next five years of a new labour government, how much help do you have that children with special educational needs will be prioritised under labour? I hope so. I really do hope so. I mean we're actually, we're probably at crisis point right now I think in terms of education as a whole especially in the SCM sector. So this needs to become a priority for our labour government. It really, really does. And I hope that change, you know, this change is a good thing and maybe, you know, some fresh ideas and some new MPs, local MPs can actually push and drive some of these changes in a positive way. Well, KCC's corporate director for children, young people and education, Sarah Hammond, insists the council's aim is to prepare those with the most severe needs for adult life. This is what she said. Her aim is to prepare children and young people with severe and complex special educational needs for adulthood by providing a special school place as close to their local community as possible. By designating our schools, we can make sure they have trained staff, special resources and facilities to reflect the type of need they support. We want to hear from those people whose experience can help shape our approach. We'd love to know what you think about this story. You can comment by heading to KentOnline.co.uk or following us on socials. Kent Online reports. A teenage boy accused of attacking two women at a sick place of worship in Graves' end has been detained for mental health assessment. A 17-year-old appeared at Maidstone Crown Court over the weekend in connection with the incident at the Goodwara on Thursday night. He's due at Medway Youth Court on Thursday. A man's been arrested on suspicion of drink driving after a crash in Chatham that's left a woman in hospital. A car collided with another vehicle and overturned on Warderslade Road last night, a 23-year-old's in custody. Now, a Medway man says he's been hounded by a gas company for seven months for a bill that wasn't even his. A property in Rainham was supplied by British gas who refused to set up Benjamin Robinson as a new customer until the outstanding debt was settled. With a 41-year-old war veteran says he was even threatened with bailiffs Benjamin has been speaking to reporter Alex Langrich. The keys was very excited moving into a property on my own personal freedom and was quickly found that the building itself, the property itself, was heavily damaged and then I was receiving more and more bills. Obviously these bills, obviously you've just got the keys, you've just sort of moving in, who are these bills for, not for yourself? So it's worked out that I couldn't have possibly had used the energy and the bills were for the previous tenant who was found to be deceased. So what's kind of happened since then obviously that was the end of November, went out at the beginning of July, no longer have the keys to the property of what's been happening? So I'm continually been hounded, I'm continually been chased by British gas. There isn't one single figure thereafter, it seems to be varying figures. So I've been sent different amounts at different times, for example one would be £230 and then a month later it's up to £300 and most recently it's all changed again. And obviously this has left you, you've been quite stressed about the situation, so how are you feeling, what's been going on? Yeah so understandably my day to day life is that constant pressure, constant worry and anxiety that with one of the letters I received is a bailiff notice, so I'm constantly worrying about the bailiffs are going to be turning up to my property, taking my belongings for a debt that I can't possibly be liable for. Yeah so essentially I feel like I'm being terrorised for something I literally haven't done. After Kent Online contacted British gas Mr Robinson was told the entire summer the bill had been written off, British gas has been contacted for further information and comment. Residents in part of West Kent are calling for a main route between Tentedon and Tumbridge Wells to be downgraded to a B road. Villages living in Biddenden, Gauter's Cranbrook and Sissinghurst say Lori's on the A262 caused traffic chaos and keep getting stuck on unsuitable tight bends, while more than 230 people have now joined forces in a bid to get the route reclassified as a B road with restrictions for HGVs. And plans for a new housing development on a busy road in Maidstone have been approved, it means 42 homes will be built in Hermitage Lane close to the town's hospital. The plans were first submitted in April 2022 and have been given the go ahead, despite dozens of concerns it would add extra strain to an already busy road. Kent Online reports. Now one of Kent's new MPs has been chatting about getting used to Westminster just days after he was preparing for the end of term. Teresa Osborne was elected to represent Chatham under Aylesford 10 days ago. The former teacher was one of 10 new labour MPs in the county and I've been speaking to him about his new life in government. From one day working in a classroom on Wednesday morning last week, teaching years seven to eight about conservation and climate change to the next day winning and being given a tour of the House of Commons on a Sunday. So yeah, if you could pinch yourself, it's not something that you would expect necessarily to happen when in the course of one week, but that's politics I suppose. I saw some describing Westminster as a bit like Hogwarts, so perhaps you have gone from one school into pretty much another is just on a much grander scale. Are you getting used to it? I mean, it's a huge place, isn't it, to get your head around? I mean, I don't know if you can ever get used to it. I said on day one, to work in such a building, it's an architectural marvel, isn't it? And you just have to remind yourself every time you see Big Ben and going into the palace that it is, it's a blessing and it's part of our long tradition and heritage. There are, you're absolutely right, it has been described by some of my colleagues as Hogwarts. The reason being is because you get introduced to corridors and passageways that you never knew existed and it's very easy to get lost in there as well. Very kindly though, they put staff at most of the major locations to help wayward MPs who get lost in corridors to their appropriate locations. I suspect it will take a couple of weeks to get used to it, but I don't doubt that even after several years, there are people who find corridors and rooms and never knew existed in that place. So it is a labyrinth in there and it's a great pleasure to be there and it's an amazing building, but it's definitely, Hogwarts is probably the best word to describe it at this moment in time because there is a sort of change of guard culture and a new feel about the place with all of these new MPs that have come in. We mentioned that you were teaching not that long ago, did you get a chance to say cheerio to your students or was it a bit of a swift exit and then straight into your new job? So I did go in on the Monday to say goodbye. We have a special week at my school where we allow the students to pursue extracurricular activities and so this week has been that week in school so I was looking, I was looking after the earth week alongside my colleagues so I've left on a bit of the lurch and I had to apologise for doing that because we had a series of events organised for the kids to visit the Natural History Museum and visit other locations as well. So I haven't seen my form yet, annoyingly, but hopefully next week it is my intention to go in on the last day and say goodbye, but I think here Starmer has given us indication that we might need to be in on Fridays as well so we will see if I can make it. But I do, you know, I've said goodbye to many of the kids, they came up to me during registration on Monday morning to congratulate me. Some knew what an MP was, I think some had other misconceptions about what the role entails, to put it mildly, but no, it's a very surreal experience to be lining up with you on Monday morning with the kids and then being in common six hours later. Thanks ever so much to Tris for chatting to me. Plans have been submitted to add overnight accommodation to a daycare centre in Ashford that cares for people with autism. The proposals would see seven bedrooms added to Manner House in Bentley Road. The Kent Autistic Trust says it's in response to the charity's specialist needs and appeals been launched to raise funds for a permanent memorial in Graves End to honour the local men who lost their lives in a tugboat accident nearly 70 years ago. Five people were killed when steam tug survey capsized on the river Thames in 1954. Campaigners are hoping to raise 950 pounds ahead of the anniversary in October. Two Kent beaches have been named today as some of the best in the country, Sandgate and Westbrook Bay feature in the top seven of the times and Sunday times best UK beaches in the southeast guide. The beaches are judged on things like natural beauty, water quality, cleanliness and dog friendliness. Southbourne Beach in Dorset came in at number one and to new crime dramas starring gamer thrones actress Sophie Turner which was filmed partly in her Bay is due to hit TV screens in September. It's based on the true story of notorious dual thief Joan Harrington Cruz took over the Central Parade car park last May to shoot scenes. Kent's online sport. For ball and it was a very disappointing night wasn't it for England fans Gareth Southgate's side were beaten to one by Spain in the final of Euro 2024. It means their 58 year wait for a major men's tournament trophy continues for these fans watching at Folkestone Harbour Arm last night were very disappointed. Do you want to give your reaction to that as we go out for a game? We've played awful. We've played rubbish. We never win. We've never been able to see. We've never seen England win. We've never seen England win a game. This is horrendous. Horrific. Absolutely sham-polic. I could have done better on that pitch today. I would have scored in 89th minute 100% reaction. I missed the first goal so that was not very good but I do think it was going to go to penalties so it's not the best but two won at least. At least we've got one goal in. So we thought it was coming home but you know what I'm happy we scored a goal it was a laugh and at the end of the day. Life's good. May the best team win. We can't stand here and say we deserved it but you go into the tournament's favourites you scrape through the group stage scrape through most of the knockout stages putting one good performance the whole tournament and then we do that. We've let a 16 year old run us around for 90 minutes so what's that about? We got it. All right and got it. I'm fed up. I'm fed up with you Gareth Southgate. What have you done? I'm starting to go. What have you done? Of course. I mean like, the club armour is probably not a game here you know. There's a lot of potential from the teams. We have a future but it's not where Southgate on the wheel. Southgate is terrible. Is that the first to change view then? It's Southgate all toward him. Right last few years he's done better than anyone has but I think we're the team that we've got the players we've got we should be doing better than that. Like you've got players like Bellingham who are up for like the ballon ball and we're not managing to beat Spain. We've been good but I feel like we should have done better than end of the day. Actually I know this is a hard game. I say I'm a Southgate we've done well which ain't turned off today. This whole tournament is undone. Simple as that. Staying with football and Gillingham's new managers admitted his first match in charge wasn't the prettiest. The drills drew Neil Neil with Millwall in their pre-season friendly at Crossfield on Saturday. Mark Bonnet took over as boss of the club in May and says this stage is mainly about preparation. In the end the game's about fitness. It's so boring in it but it is it's just about getting 45 minutes game play. At the end of a busy two weeks lads have worked socks off actually and we've we have bombarded them with information. So you don't expect everything to be really fluid at this stage at all. You just hope that everyone can come through it. I think pretty much they have. Probably find out Monday once they recover a little bit from it. But yeah 45 minutes of work against the championship team that are a week ahead of us and a game ahead of us. Little bits in there that we're quite pleased with. Lots of scruffy stuff but it's just to be expected I think at this stage. So yeah good afternoon in the end. Not a beautiful spectacle by any means but yeah ticks a box one game down and try and do it all again next week. As they know we're back have it again Monday so recover get ready to go have another real big week next week going to Watford and then we go to two game weeks for a couple of weeks which will you know look after itself in terms of match minutes a little bit but at this early stage you can't get this time back once the season starts. So we've wanted to push them quite hard and they've done they've done great. So yeah one or two good moments in the game. One or two attacking moments of good threat and lots of things to work on which you'd pretty much expect at any time preseason but certainly with the new team. But that's all from us for 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 details on the top stories. Direct your email each morning via the briefing to sign up to that. You just need to head to kentonline.co.uk News you can trust. This is the Kent Online podcast.
