As traffic grinds to a halt in a town, councillors are again asking what has happened to a promised £16.5 million in funding for junction improvements, fearing much of it has been handed back.

Congestion in Maidstone has been aggravated by the simultaneous closures of 13 roads in recent weeks, with two of these still causing chaos.

But even before the latest round of misery, traffic in the County Town was often a nightmare with Hermitage Lane, Willington Street, Loose Road and Sutton Road acting as bottlenecks.

Eight years has passed since a raft of measurements was proposed to help ease congestion around Maidstone.

Cllr Brian Clark (Lib Dem) is the chairman of the Maidstone Joint Transportation Board, made up of both borough and county councillors for the area, which is charged with overseeing the work of the highways authority, KCC Highways.

He said: “It’s extremely frustrating. Back in October 2018, the board was told that KCC had £16.57m set aside for junction improvements, in what was called the Maidstone Integrated Transport Package (MITP).

“That series of junction improvements was supposed to be mitigation for all the extra housing that Maidstone was taking under its 2017 adopted Local Plan.

“My fear is that some of this money (£8.9m) came from the government under what was called the SELEP - The South East Local Enterprise Partnership - and that money was originally supposed to be spent by the spring of 2020, or returned.

“When 2020 came and no work had happened, we were told verbally by KCC officers that the government had agreed an extension, because by then we were into Covid, but we were never told for how long or what happened to that money.

“The other part of the £16.57m was from developer contributions collected through Section 106 agreements. Usually, there is a time limit on such agreements, and, again, if the money isn’t spent within the timeframe, it has to be returned.

“We as councillors have no idea what has happened to this money - Has it been spent? Has it been returned? - because we can’t get KCC to tell us!”

Cllr Clark said that after numerous inquiries were rebuffed or ignored, the board asked in August 2023 for a full report as an agenda item.

He said: “We didn’t get it. We’ve asked at every meeting since, and still not had one.

“It’s bizarre. How can we properly plan for future improvements if we don’t know how much money we have?”

Despite few projects being completed, KCC has tried to bring forward change.

Schemes were drawn up by its engineers for improvements to the Sutton Road/Willington Street junction, but were rejected by councillors.

Outside of the original 10 junctions, KCC also drew up plans to improve Linton Crossroads, but again these were rejected by Maidstone council, under the previous Conservative administration.

Its engineers found it impossible to draw up any acceptable plans for either Fountain Lane/Tonbridge Road, or the Swan junction on the A229, or the Wheatsheaf junction on the Loose Road, where, after closing Cranborne Avenue, the authority settled for a “do minimum“ approach.

Work has now re-started on increasing capacity on the A249 at Bearsted.

The Coldharbour Roundabout, which was completed in November 2024, cost £5m alone.

Cllr Clark said: “Nevertheless, Maidstone has absorbed the four large housing developments along the A274 at Langley for which there has been no mitigation whatsoever.

“This is public money that existed once. We should be able to find out what’s happened to it.”

Cllr Clark also pointed out that, in 2019, KCC spent £500k purchasing the Wheatsheaf pub when it thought it would need the land for an expanded junction.

Now the junction plan has been shelved, and the pub, which has remained empty for the past six years, is slowly rotting away.

KCC did not respond to our request for comment.