Swanscombe sinkhole driving business towards dead end

It's not the first traffic disruption the town has faced, with a major road still shut after a landslip last year.

Transcript

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.