Cost of Blue Bell Hill improvements soars by £50m

The cost of improvements to a busy stretch of highway in Kent has soared by £50m in just a few years, according to council documents.

A programme of works to improve Blue Bell Hill, specifically the heavily-congested stretch of the A229 near Maidstone, was originally set at £202m less than five years ago.

It has since risen by 25% to £250m, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.

This increase has been blamed on inflation, as well as delays in the approval process by the Department for Transport (DfT) which will fund 85% of a project that aims to improve journey time and reduce congestion. The DfT said it was waiting for the full proposals.

A raft of changes would see the A229 get a new slip road westbound to the M2 at the Lord Lees roundabout, and a new roundabout introduced at the A2045/Taddington Link.

Improved merging from the A229 to the M20 at J6 is also planned alongside enlargement of the Running Horse roundabout.

The scale of this increase is laid out in the agenda for an upcoming meeting of the Kent County Council (KCC) environment and transport cabinet committee on 14 January.

According to those papers, a feasibility study ranked this part of the A229 as "the second worst section of A road in the county" against criteria of traffic levels, delays, collisions and journey time reliability.

The study also determined that "the M20 and M2 junctions have a significant role in the delays and collisions on Blue Bell Hill".

A funding request submitted to the DfT in late 2020 was approved just under three years later in October 2023.

The council's highways and transport committee chairman, Sean Holden, claimed that "DfT delays have pushed up the costs".

"The government's delays are to blame and I don't think much of that," he added.

A DfT spokesperson said: "These claims are incorrect.

"The Department continues to await full proposals for the Blue Bell Hill road scheme from Kent County Council, and we will continue to offer support as they undertake this work."

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