Additional reporting by Elli Hodgson

The issue of house building in Kent is hardly new - nor is the apparent lack of infrastructure to support it. But in one corner of Kent, residents now feel trapped by traffic jams, as Simon Finlay reports...

“Politicians don’t need any qualifications to become politicians - all they need is a big mouth to make promises they can’t deliver.”

This, surprisingly, falls from the lips of a politician. It isn’t immediately clear if he is talking about himself, but one suspects not.

Cllr John Wright, who sits on the Conservative-run Kent County Council representing Sittingbourne south, is having a dig at the eternal impasse of what our political classes entice the electorate with and what they actually achieve.

Daily traffic snarl-ups, lengthy queues, missed appointments and increasing stress levels are caused wholly (or in large part) by the volume of homes being built on his patch.

On the one hand, the government has directed a massive and seemingly unrelenting house-building programme to satisfy a perceived shortage in the south east while, on the other local, elected authorities have to deal with the consequences.

In many ways, Sittingbourne has become something of a microcosm of that tension between political wills across the county.

For the luckless local inhabitants, it is a growing sense they are becoming physically trapped by rapid growth and the creaking roads which are constantly being worked on.

Major works on A249 and developments in and around the A2, as well as incessant full and partial closures are now a depressing normality.

Utility companies installing new kit, remedial works, pothole patching and new developments all conspire against the people and their everyday lives.

Delayed works run sometimes into scheduled ones by different agencies causing even worse problems when the two accidentally compete.

For instance, the near three month closure (for sewage pipes) of the cut-through at Wises Lane simply heaps pressure on other areas.

The infrastructure required for housing targets of such a massive scale simply are not fed into the equation in the way it is meant to, argue some.

“It’s accumulated into a perfect storm,” muses Cllr Wright in the kitchen of his Lower Hartlip farmhouse. “It’s very difficult when you are just a big building site.”

For some locals, it feels like grief at the loss of what was once ‘normal’. To others, it stirs impotent rage.

Oak Road resident Paul Bennett is suffering the impact of the recent expansion of his town.

So gridlocked are the roads at times, that residents dump their cars “wherever” to finish the journey on foot, he says. Nor can they park outside their homes any more, sometimes finding a space streets away. A 20 minute journey can take hours.

“You feel trapped in your own home,” says Mr Bennett, “yet still they keep building.”

Life is tough for Mr Bennett, enduring the after-effects of a serious illness but he despairs at the way his town has changed, quite aside from the pressures on the NHS, GP surgeries, schools and “practically non-existent” NHS dentists.

He says: “It is depressing what has happened to this town and the surrounding areas. It was a beautiful place with brilliant scenery and now you just look at houses while you sit parked up waiting to move in the traffic that you know is getting worse as land is being bought up by developers everywhere.

"It is affecting people's lives and their livelihoods as well, and it is driving us crazy.”

Swale Borough Council’s last Local Plan included around 15,000 homes with another 11,000 foisted by central government. The council wants the additional number reduced to around 6,000 but one local councillor thinks even that might be a stretch.

Areas like Borden earmarked for 750 houses will be irrevocably changed.

At Grovehurst Park, Kemsley, work will soon be underway for 115 houses which the developers say will “meet local housing needs”.

But ask anyone who is buying this glut of housing and the answer is nearly always: “Londoners.”

Many mention the northern and southern relief roads - but Cllr Wright, 63, doubts they are the panacea they might appear.

“With the relief roads will come 10,000 houses. Who wants them? We have been talking about that for 20 years and I started it off.”

For a man whose family’s brick-making business “helped build Sittingbourne” a couple of centuries back, he conceded: “It’s going to get worse - but it is fixable.

“It’s about political will and money.”

John Griffin, 84, has lived in Sittingbourne for 60 years and spent his working life in the building trade.

The problem, he says, is beyond solution.

“I don’t think you can fix it. You can build a (relief) road but it will soon fill up as well. Take the M25 - as soon as it was opened it was full up. Now look at it - a total mess.”

Mr Griffin blames Sittingbourne’s snarled up roads and disappearing countryside on the fact that land is so freely available.

“It’s the same all over - there is hardly any farmland left - but the government has forced the local council to build all these houses, so the land becomes too attractive not to sell.”

He is not convinced modern houses are of great quality, either, and offers the maxim that “a good house is an old house”.

Wearily, he adds: “There is so much traffic going through the town but nothing is stopping.

“Everyone has a car. It used to be that a family had one car. These days every couple and all their children have cars. Sometimes five to a house - that adds the pressure on the roads. Public transport isn’t that good, so there is no incentive to take the bus.”

Darren Wilkins, 54, an IT technician from Chatham, no longer drives to Sittingbourne for work.

He says: “I work for JK consultants and if I drive in from Chatham, getting from Chatham to Sittingbourne is actually quicker than getting from the start of London Road, into the centre of Sittingbourne to park - it can take me 20 minutes to half an hour to get through there and it’s ridiculous.

“During the day we go out on work and we’ve got to get in and out of Sittingbourne and the traffic can put so much time on our jobs.

“It’s getting to the point that I will prefer to get the train in, even with the slight delays on there, I know I’m going to get more to work on time rather than trying to drive in from Chatham. It's really bad.”

NHS worker Caroline Gower, 44, of Ruins Barn Road, Sittingbourne, said: “The traffic is a lot worse because it takes about half an hour to get across town.

“They’ve built so many more houses and they haven’t done anything to the roads, it’s the same roads but there’s more traffic lights than there ever was.”

The wisdom that more houses will eventually force the prices down to the pockets of younger people cuts little ice locally, not least with Swale Independent borough member and Kent county councillor, Mike Baldock.

“We are catering for the London market and we should be providing houses close to where local people work. That also means developers building houses in London - not just more office blocks.”

Cllr Baldock, part of the ruling Labour-led coalition at Swale, says the government's 300,000 annual housing targets are “unrealistic”, urging that “what we need is more council housing and more social housing”.

Cllr Baldock adds: “It’s having a very bad effect on people’s lives - life is becoming stressful. Commutes and school runs take a lot longer, constant disruption and the air pollution has worsened.

“With more houses you don’t get the nice things, you just get the bad things.”

A likely change of government will make no odds, he contends.

“The Tories have relaxed the targets a little but Labour say that they are going to bring them back in again, thinking there is a housing shortage.

“They don’t see that people’s lives are already intolerable and might have to put up with another 10 years of road misery. We need to scrap the targets.

“But it will be no different under a Labour government. They are both committed to the same thing and the developers have nothing to fear - unless the voters vote for other options.”

(He intends to stand for parliament at the general election as an independent).

It's mid-morning in a rained-on, empty Sittingbourne High Street, and Meghan, who moved to Grove Park five years ago from south London, says she now wants to leave.

She sets aside 90 minutes each day to drive the 15 miles to her place of work.

“It’s a joke…it’s awful. You just can’t get anywhere. The place is always snarled up with road works. There are road works everywhere. You feel like you’re physically trapped.

“It seems to get worse by the day. If I could leave, I would.”