As a haulage contractor for many years, I have long supported the inclusion of slip roads at Chevening, and at Otford Rd. These would give obvious relief from long distance traffic, not just to Borough Green & Platt, but also to Seal and Eastern Sevenoaks, without any detriment to anyone except Chevening Village. However, I have opposed slip roads because they have been used as a delaying tactic for our Bypass, and also because there is no way we can quantify how much of the traffic that plagues us is actually long distance that could be removed from our village by this project.

However,  recent events have brought insuperable and almost endless delays to our Bypass, and with the escalating threat of that Bypass being funded by mass housing, I think we need to think very seriously about lending our support to the wider campaign. There is a current project wending its way through the planning process to widen the M25 in the Sevenoaks Area, and this would be the obvious time to include those slips as part of the project.

Tim Shaw is calling for a new look at Slip roads as a measure that could provide traffic relief for every village on the A25, and with the current project to widen the M25, now is the time to revitalise the campaign.Tim has been very successful in gathering wider support for the campaign, and we look forward to a meeting of all the interested parties very soon.

The opposition to Otford Rd slips is based mainly on the inability for the Bat & Ball junction to carry more traffic. But I think that is a needless worry: all that will happen is that the traffic flow here will reverse: it won't be new traffic, just the traffic rejoining the A25 after missing eastern Sevenoaks, Seal, Borough Green and Platt, and in the other direction joining the M26 to miss Riverhead, Dunton Green Brasted and Westerham.

The Chevening junction is more problematic, mainly because of the land use in this most beautiful area. But we are all besieged by traffic, and it isn't going to heal itself.

We need a radical rethink in the light of modern problems and modern solutions.

Borough Green Parish Council have appointed Cllr Steve Perry to the J5 Slips campaign :see more at www.j5slips.org

                                                        ?