Work to repair a pothole-ridden road has been criticised as “woefully inadequate” by the people who live there.
It follows calls for the council to fix Matts Hill Lane in Hartlip, which is regularly used as a rat-run from the A249 to the M2 at Farthing Corner.
KentOnline first reported on the state of the route at the beginning of February when Kirstie Brown, who owns a nearby alpaca farm and wedding venue, revealed how it would impact them if things didn’t improve.
Speaking previously, she said: “It’s got worse and worse, especially over the last six months.
“A lot of them have a square edge – so if a tyre hits it, it’s not just a case of going in and out of a little dip.
“It will rip your car. By the summer, it will begin to affect our business.
“No one is going to want to drive a nice vintage car to a wedding where the likelihood of it having a puncture or ruining the wheels is quite high.”
More than six weeks on, resident Phil Woods said some of the smaller holes have been cold-filled – a common and faster method than a traditional fix, suitable for smaller repairs in colder weather which can then be driven over straight away – but the largest and most dangerous ones seem to have been left untouched.
He said: “I had to use that road to access my GP surgery and have to say that their effort at repair is woefully inadequate.
“On my return journey, I followed a cyclist who had to weave across the road many times to avoid them.”
Kirstie added: “They are already cracking out. They didn’t do the big ones at the edge, but you can at least drive down without damaging your car.
“The whole road needs resurfacing, but that’s unlikely to happen.”
Phil, a former chairman of Stockbury Parish Council who lives in Yelsted, uses the route a couple of times a week.
He believes that the potholes which have been filled will eventually pop out because he feels they haven’t been cut and repaired to a lasting standard.
In our earlier article, a spokesman for Medway Council confirmed that on January 29, it had identified 13 defects along both Matts Hill Road and Matts Hill Lane, which were set to be fixed.
The authority was also arranging for the route to be assessed, to see how high a priority it should be on the pothole repairs waiting list.
The spokesman added: “Over the past year, we have improved our programme of road repairs, moving away from temporary individual pothole repairs to more effective long-term patching.
“So far this financial year, we have completed 16 large preventative resurfacing projects, and more than 90 smaller preventive resurfacing projects.
“However, as with councils across the country, the financial constraints we face mean repairs have to be prioritised to ensure the resources we have are directed in the places they are most needed.”
The road runs next to Matts Hill Farm, a commercial estate used by FM Conway, Rock Rush Aggregates, M2 Tyres and more.
A mix of heavy machinery and regular vehicle use, as well as the wet and cold weather of the last few weeks, has caused it to fall into serious disrepair.
Phil added: “It depends on what you count as a defect. There’s also some dispute on what the edge of the road is and what constitutes a passing space.
“They [the council] won’t do the passing spaces on principle. But they seem to have decided most of the edge of the road is a passing space, and there are some big holes there.
“If you have an HGV coming towards you, the unwary will go straight into what looks like a puddle.
“What they don’t realise is it’s 10 inches deep, and it’s going to take their wheel out.”
Phil first reported the state of the road to the authority back in September 2024. From then on, he has chased them every three months or so throughout the last year-and-a-half.
The 67-year-old explained: “Last summer, a highways engineer got back to me and said they had marked up a few bits and were planning on doing something much bigger. Then nothing happened.
“More recently, I got a response and was told that they don’t have much money to spend on this.
“I understand the difficulties and the financial position the council is in. However, they need to acknowledge that the piece of road, because of their planning decisions, suffers the type of wear that an A-road would.
“The only long-term solution is to make that section up to an A-road standard. That’s a lot of work and very expensive, I understand that.
“You need to put the infrastructure in place before you build or allow anything, which is a problem we face across Kent and Medway.”
Medway Council was contacted for a comment on the latest situation but has not responded.
