It's not the first traffic disruption the town has faced, with a major road still shut after a landslip last year.
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00:00Men at work and a familiar sinking feeling for residents here in Swanscombe.
00:06Over the weekend part of the high street collapsed just a few days after Kent County Council
00:13repaired sinkholes in a similar area.
00:16You can see the scale of the road collapse just over my shoulder.
00:19It's several metres wide, several metres deep and there's about six or seven people working
00:25to clear debris before repairs can take place.
00:29We don't exactly know when that's going to happen, for some that isn't good enough.
00:35Not far from the sinkhole, Michael Cheal is on the lookout for customers.
00:40His business has lost more than £50,000 in the last year following the Galley Hill landslip.
00:48And the recent road closure means there's almost no traffic whatsoever.
00:53I'm not a defeatist, I won't give up, but sometimes you've just got to think to yourself,
01:00what do I do?
01:01What can I do?
01:02There's nothing I can do.
01:03I've just got to try and keep going, but the more it goes on the worse it gets.
01:10With no passing traffic I've got no work, no clients, nothing.
01:15With the recent wave of disruption and Galley Hill still closed, Darthers MP has waded in,
01:22inviting the Roads Minister to come down to the site and calling for a long-term solution.
01:28I think there's a big problem with roads in that area in that they are all built on chalk
01:33surfacing, chalk cliffs effectively, overlooking the estuary and that makes them inherently
01:40unstable.
01:41I think on top of that you've got a decade of under-investment in roads under the last
01:46government and by Kent County Council who haven't got any money and this is creating
01:51a very unstable situation for Swanscombe, I've actually invited the Roads Minister to
01:56come down and she is going to visit us shortly in Swanscombe to look at Galley Hill Road
02:01and while she is down I will be talking to her about the wider problem.
02:06Kent County Council has apologised for the disruption and say the safety of residents
02:11is paramount as they try and figure out exactly what happened.
02:15Well I think at the moment with what's happened at the weekend we need to investigate exactly
02:18why it's happened and what and look at the bigger thing.
02:22We are in discussion with the Department of Transport about various Galley Hill issues
02:26we will continue to do so but on the immediate issues raised over the weekend we just need
02:30to find out why that's happened.
02:33With the Ministerial visit being discussed for later this week, the community will be
02:37hoping there won't be many more roadblocks in the pathway back to normality.
02:43Oliver Leader of the SACs for KMTV in Swanscombe.