The Met Office has confirmed it is looking to replace its weather observation station.

The observation station in Gravesend regularly recorded some of the country's hottest temperatures.

It closed on August 30 last year after the weather service said there had been “significant changes to the site”, at Broadness, near Swanscombe, citing the development of the London Resort theme park as one of the reasons. It had been open for 23 years.

It had been open for 23 years.

The site was one of several in Kent. The next nearest is now East Malling. There is also a site at Shoeburyness in Essex and there are also around 10 sites in London.

Met Office spokesman Nicky Maxey said: "Planned changes to the site, including the possible development of a new theme park, meant the site would be entirely unsuitable for taking observations in the coming years.

"We are still considering where in the locality we might be able, at some point, to open a replacement site that would be representative of that part of Kent."

The highest recorded temperature at the site was 38.1 degrees centigrade, which was recorded in 2003.

Last year, on August 2, a temperature of 30.6 degrees centigrade was recorded, which was the hottest temperature recorded that day in the UK.

The sandy soil at Broadness, where the weather station was sited, heated up well in direct sunshine.

Lester Gosbee, a weather correspondent for KentOnline's sister paper Kent Messenger, said he discovered that the station had closed when he didn't see the station appear on the Met Office's communications any more.

He said that he got in contact with the weather service, who told him that concrete and metal railings had obscured the readings.

He said: "It's overexposed to concrete and it has metal railings around it to stop it from being vandalised and they decided that some of the readings are not as accurate as they should be because of the overexposure."

Mr Gosbee runs an observation centre in Frittenden, Tunbridge Wells.

Addressing the claims, Nicky Maxey said: "When open the station satisfied the usual criteria for weather stations in terms of its exposure, and was regularly inspected by the Land Surface Observations team.

"The concrete and railings would only make a very small difference to the temperature readings, probably greatest on sunny days with light winds but even then only a couple of tenths of a degree."

Read more: All the latest news from Gravesend