A recycling centre is to close for five weeks following a major water leak, meaning residents will have to travel more than seven miles to the nearest tip.

Pepper Hill Recycling Centre in Station Road, Southfleet, Gravesend, will be closed from June 17 while repairs are carried out to fix a high pressure water leak underground.

It means the public will have to find alternative sites, while council waste lorries, which use the centre for household rubbish collected from every property in Gravesend and Dartford, will also have to be diverted elsewhere.

Kent County councillor Peter Harman says it is the perfect example of why the plan to permanently close four recycling sites across Kent should not go ahead.

He said: “This is the fourth time the centre has had to be closed for a lengthy period of time following two major fires and a deep clean of chemical deposits after one of the fires. All of which lasted a number of weeks.

“It shows how daft the idea to close some of the sites around Kent really is. With Medway’s Cuxton recycling centre no longer available to KCC residents as part of the service, the nearest ones to Dartford residents must be Swanley or Sevenoaks; which are both a very long drive from the Crayford end of Dartford Borough.”

Cllr Harman said there needs to be a better solution to the proposals.

“None of the options for closure are attractive or acceptable to residents, but the one that appears to be least harmful would be to restrict the recycling centre opening days of all tips,” he said.

“If these closure days were staggered between tips it means the service would still be available at adjacent facilities if needed urgently, and the service reduction would be easily reversible if and when financial conditions improved. Plus of course KCC would still have the flexibility to deal with any “unforeseen circumstances” such as this.”

As part of drastic cost-saving plans unveiled by council bosses, four rubbish tips could be permanently shut in Dartford, Faversham, Maidstone (Tovil) and at Richborough near Sandwich.

If all four sites were to close it would mean almost 12,000 people no longer being within a 20-minute drive of a recycling centre, which goes against the advice of climate experts.