UP TO 500 people were turned away from the Department for Transport's only Medway exhibition on the Cliffe airport proposal on Thursday night.

They had waited patiently for more than an hour outside Bridgewood Manor Hotel, Walderslade, Chatham, near the Blue Bell Hill M2 junction.

Then hotel staff shut the doors and told them to go home. The 200-yard queue wound round the hotel. Many refused to move.

The police were called to back up a team of bouncers employed by the DfT to control the increasingly annoyed crowd which had been queuing since 8am.

Many could soon see their homes and villages bulldozed to provide runways and cargo handling areas if the five runway airport is built.

There were no incidents, but the families insisted on signing the attendance register. Visitors also complained that the exhibition was too far from the areas it was due to affect most, and should have been held on a weekend as opposed to a work day.

Richard Watson, a senior member of the DfT's airports policy division, admitted that they had never considered how many people would attend the exhibition.

And an investigation is now underway to find out why the government's communication service failed to notify the local press about the exhibition.

David Sterling, a senior press officer at the DfT handling the airport proposals, said they were investigating the possibility of restaging the exhibition somewhere on the Hoo Peninsula before November's deadline on consultations.

MEDWAY Council is poised to join Kent Count Council in launching a legal challenge to block the proposed airport.

The council’s cabinet has decided that Transport Secretary Alastair Darling’s conclusion that Cliffe airport should be built, is flawed, following a report by legal experts commissioned last month.

An emergency meeting has now been called at the Municipal Buildings, Gillingham, on Monday at 6pm.

Members will consider joining the county council in a call for a judicial review of the government’s decision to rule out the construction of a second runway at Gatwick Airport.

The cabinet members believe Mr Darling was wrong to omit Gatwick from his considerations when he proposed building the airport on the nature reserves on Cliffe Marshes.

Alex King, Kent County Council cabinet member for regeneration, said: “The apparent veto on building another runway at Gatwick must be legally challenged.

“Gatwick has the infrastructure in place and would seem a logical choice for expansion, rather than building a new airport on environmentally-sensitive marshland which is internationally recognised for its importance to bird life.”