The government has been urged to get going on the Lower Thames Crossing, after months of waiting for it to be announced.

It was revealed this morning Option C - a tunnel at Gravesend - was the favoured plan, following the Western Southern Link road route, coming off the A2 west of Thong.

KCC corporate director for growth, environment and transport Barbara Cooper said: “We welcome the announcement on the route for the Lower Thames Crossing, putting to rest the uncertainty for residents in Kent, Thurrock and Essex.

Scroll down for audio

“It is now essential that Highways England delivers the scheme at pace as this essential piece of infrastructure that relieves the international corridor from Dover to the Midlands and North is needed now, and any delays to the delivery timetable will be detrimental to the UK economy.

“Kent County Council has been campaigning for a new Lower Thames Crossing to be built for more than 15 years to relieve the congestion and overloading at the existing Dartford Crossing, which with peak flows often exceeding 162,000 movements per day has long exceeded its design of capacity of 135,000 vehicles a day.

“The Dartford Crossing is closed over 300 times per year for an average of 30 minutes, but it typically takes three to five hours for the roads to return to normal following a closure.

“A new crossing will provide much needed network resilience and create a new strategic route from Dover to the Midlands and the North, essential for this international gateway with an average of 10,800 HGV movements per day through the Channel ports, which is growing year on year and is forecast to continue to grow by 5% per year.

“A new crossing will deliver economic prosperity for Kent, the South East and the wider UK, supporting an estimated 6,000 new jobs and add 12.7 billion to the local economy.

“We strongly reiterate the necessity for Highways England to deliver the upgrades to the connections between the M20 and M2 - including the A229 and A249 - and the wider network improvements desperately needed along the A2/M2 to support the splitting of traffic between the M2/A2 and M20/A20 corridors.

“We are pleased that government has selected the Western Southern Link, which was our own preferred route on the Kent side of the crossing, as this will minimise the environmental impacts and avoids the village of Shorne.

“The chosen route has greater opportunities for tunnelling or using cuttings for part of the route to reduce the noise and visual impact.

“We will provide input to the plans as they are developed to ensure that any negative impacts are mitigated and so that Kent’s residents get the best deal from this significant investment in our infrastructure.

“What must happen now is for government to give reassurance to those affected by the new road and so we will continue to insist that a generous compensation package is provided for property owners affected.

“We fully appreciate the distress that this proposal has caused to the local community but due to the transport and economic benefits that a new Lower Thames Crossing will provide, we believe this is the right decision for the county, and indeed the country.”

Someone who isn't happy is Bob Lane, chairman of Lower Thames Crossing Association (LTCA), who campaigned against Option C.

He said: "I think they've made a mistake and missed an opportunity to fix a problem in Dartford for a generation.

"They've condemned the people of Dartford, and drivers on the M25, to continuous problems.

"It's not a matter of people in Gravesend or Dartford, wherever you put the crossing you're going to upset people. They needed to put that to one side and come up with the solution that is right for traffic.

"The Highways England forecast clearly shows Option C won't solve the problems and Dartford Crossing will still be over capacity.

"It seems an exercise to spend £4 or 5 billion on something that isn't going to solve the problem it set out to solve."

A statement released by the LTCA this afternoon said it is "extremely disappointed, but not surprised at the Government’s decision to build a new Lower Thames Crossing east of Gravesend and vows to fight on".

The statement went on: "Highways England has duped the Government, motorists, road transport operators, and the people of Dartford. They have persuaded them that Option C is the panacea to all the problems at Dartford, when their own forecasts clearly show that traffic at Dartford will still be over capacity even after Option C is open, and the traffic restrictions and frequent stoppages to let petrol tankers through the tunnels will still continue.

"Road users and Kent residents will be horrified when they realise that the problems have not been resolved, and that the once-in-a-generation opportunity to finally complete the M25 and fix the problems at Dartford has been missed. Too late, the damage will have been done, and demands for a new bridge at Dartford to bypass the existing tunnels will inevitably follow.

"LTCA will now meet with local representatives and with its legal advisers to determine whether there are sufficient legal grounds for successfully challenging this decision. In the meantime, we will demand an urgent meeting with Highways England to hear what they propose to do to protect the environment and to find out what they intend to do to prevent minor roads and villages in the North Kent and South Essex regions from becoming rat-runs."

Robin Theobald, chairman of Shorne Parish Council, was also disappointed by the decision.

He said: "I feel sorry for the people of Dartford who have been duped.

"They've been told this will relieve congestion around their town but it won't - they're going to wait 10 years for a new road to be built that won't make a difference.

"From the point of view of Shorne, we are disappointed."

Kent county councillor Bryan Sweetland, who represents Gravesham Rural, quit his cabinet post in protest over Kent County Council’s support for Option C.

He said Gravesham council should consider seeking a judicial review over the government's decision.

"It's been a long process - I've been speaking out for 10 years against this option and it's really disappointing," he said.

"People will be concerned and angry in Gravesham about the decision, but I think it's also disappointing for people in Dartford.

"This was a once in a lifetime opportunity to fix the problems at Dartford and it's been lost. A crossing east of Gravesend is not going to solve the traffic and congestion problems at Dartford and it certainly won't affect it for the next 10 or 15 years.

"There will have to be plans put in place to build another crossing at Dartford. You've got that small, old tunnel there that is the cause of a lot of the problems."

When asked what he would like to see happen next, he said: "I would like to see Gravesham council seriously look at whether there are grounds for a judicial review. All of the councillors voted in favour of setting £150,000 aside in case that were possible.

"The whole process has been seriously flawed. There really wasn't a consultation between Dartford and Gravesend, it was all at Gravesend.

"People who actually responded to the consultation, I don't think they were saying they wanted another crossing at Gravesend. I think they were just saying they were fed up of the queues and pollution at Dartford and the consultation only offered one option."

The Ebbsfleet Development Corporation, which is behind Ebbsfleet Garden City, is more positive about the decision.

Interim chief executive Paul Spooner said: “We are pleased the government is in favour of Option C, the option we have always said is essential to the housing and economic growth of the north Kent area as it will divert significant volumes of national and international traffic, most notably freight vehicles, away from the A2/M25 bottleneck.

“This option, along with our integrated transport plan, will ensure that Ebbsfleet Garden City achieves the government's priorities of significant new housing and sustainable growth.

"In addition to future improvements on the A2 at Bean and Ebbsfleet, we want to upgrade the Fastrack bus system and deliver new pedestrian and cycle routes to encourage more non-car journeys, as well as building the case for Crossrail to be extended to Ebbsfleet International to boost overall growth and take pressure off the road network.”

Dartford Labour leader Cllr Jonathon Hawkes was happy to hear that the government plans to build the new crossing away from his town.

However, he was critical of the amount of time it took to announce the decision.

“It’s a welcome relief that the government have finally listened to people of Dartford and made the right decision on the site of a new crossing," he said.

"The delay has had a terrible impact on business, public health and daily life in our town.

"Dartford has suffered the consequence of years of underinvestment in our road networks and public transport. The government need to commit to immediate investment in our local road network.

"This government have not had a good record of delivering on their promises in Dartford - Labour will make sure the pressure is kept up so that the improvements promised are delivered.”

Bridget Fox, sustainable transport campaigner at the Campaign for Better Transport, said: “Building a major new road through protected countryside is not the right way to address the long standing problems of traffic, much of it HGVs, through Kent.

“Instead of squandering billions on yet another expensive new road that will inevitably fill up with traffic, leading to more congestion, a better solution would be to expand port capacity north of the Thames, improve freight and passenger rail links to Kent and look at measures like distance-based HGV charging to better manage traffic.”

Nikki Williams from the Woodland Trust added: “Thanks to all those who have campaigned the chosen route is less destructive to ancient woodland than we feared.

"Nonetheless the preferred route still singularly fails to meet Highways England’s Biodiversity Action Plan which commits to ‘no net loss of biodiversity’ from its projects.

“Decisions like the one today remind us why we must continue to fight for better protection for ancient woodland, which is irreplaceable.

"Until planning policy is strengthened we will continue to see our most precious wildlife habitats chipped away for the sake of supposed economic progress.”

Dr Hilary Newport, the director of Kent Campaign to Protect Rural England, is similarly concerned about the environmental impact of the crossing.

She said: “It would only reduce congestion at Dartford by 14% and I think that is a pitiful return for the people of Dartford. This is not going to solve Dartford’s problems today or in 20 years time whenever it is built.”

“We are looking at the destruction of ancient woodland: the impact on the Green Belt and Shorne country park. We think a great deal more could be done towards sustainable transport schemes. This new tunnel won’t be built before 2026 and what will happen is that traffic levels will continue to grow.”

“From what we have seen, there is very little being done to integrate this with the wider Kent road network. It is disturbing to think of the carnage that could happen at Blue Bell Hill for example.”

Cllr Phil Filmer, Medway Council’s front line services chief, said the council “couldn’t have asked for a better outcome”.

“The council has been in favour of an additional crossing from day one, and Option C Western Southern Link has been our preferred option all along.

“Not only will this alleviate congestion on the Dartford Crossing, but it will create easy access into Medway from the M25 via the M2 and A2.

“This will be a major catalyst to drive further economic development in the area, attracting more business, raising aspirations and putting Medway on the map as a place with great transport connections, in addition to the existing high speed rail service into central London.”