Saturday 2 March 2013

The most inaccessible local council in Kent?



Yesterday I visited Kings Hill where my local council is based. The trip reminded me of all the reasons I hate to go there. It’s a one hour round trip by bus and there is only one bus an hour - with a three hour gap with no buses at all between the end of the afternoon services and the beginning of the evening services! The return fare from Tonbridge is £5.80 – so that’s nearly £12 for two of us.


Coming back, we had a half hour wait for the bus because the timing wasn’t convenient. Then the bus was half an hour late. So that’s an hour waiting in the cold for a bus and, believe me, the bus stop near the council offices is a very boring and very exposed place to wait.


I have lived in four different district council areas in Kent and this is the first one where I cannot walk or cycle to my local council offices. The first one where some genius thought it would be a good idea to put the council offices in the middle of the countryside in a mainly industrial development on the site of an old air force base. The Council is nowhere near the two main population centres of the borough, Tonbridge and Snodland. How then can it serve the interests of the people? How can it possibly encourage sustainable transport?

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