Road bosses fear the travel chaos in Kent will hit again in the summer if controls limiting traffic entering the county are not introduced.

Senior highways manager Toby Howe – who last week said Operation Brock had 'proved its worth' – admits the summer holiday getaway is a concern given the huge delays seen over the last nine days.

'Brock Zero' is currently in place on the M20 between Junction 8 for Leeds Castle and Junction 11 for Hythe, with thousands of lorries lining more than 20 miles of the motorway.

Dover District Council said it would declare a 'major incident' if serious congestion hit the town this weekend, but those fears have eased today, with traffic flowing freely through Dover at least.

Speaking to the BBC this morning, Mr Howe said "it shouldn’t be Kent that suffers every time we have these issues".

"That [the summer] is a worry," he said. "We need plans in place moving forward because every getaway, Kent could suffer.

"We need plans in place so we can restrict that traffic coming in.

"Hopefully when the ferries are back from P&O, that will assist as well.

"But there will always be some problems as we continue with this sort of thing, so we need plans in place to actually mitigate that before all that traffic comes to Kent."

In the last week, the Sevington Inland Border Facility next to Junction 10a in Ashford has been pushed into use as a holding area for trucks.

But the former Manston Airport in Thanet, which has previously been used to hold 4,000 lorries, is no longer available.

The site was effectively decommissioned in March last year after the Department for Transport said it was no longer required as part of its Brexit contingency plans.

In July, Mr Howe said: “While there is no direct replacement for the 4,000 spaces at Manston, there are a number of options at the KRF’s disposal that would enable many HGVs to be safely held in Kent.”

This morning, he added: "We have the Operation Brock traffic management system which is there for general incidences across the county.

"That can hold 2,000 HGVs and it enables traffic to continue along the M20 in both directions.

“What we’ve found is we’ve had more than those 2,000 HGVs, so we’ve had to find alternative traffic management around the M20 so that traffic can then flow to the Eurotunnel and Port of Dover."

Mr Howe reiterated how 'perfect storm' has created the traffic hell in Kent.

He said: "We’ve had the P&O issue, we then had a storm at sea which meant a lot of the ferries couldn’t cross overnight, we had a few problems with the customs process, we then had snow – all of these things have added to culminate in the problems we’ve got for Kent at the moment.”

He says a failure of the Goods Vehicle Movement Scheme (GVMS) – a major post-Brexit customs system – added to the issues last week.

"Luckily, things have been put in place now so that isn’t a delay," he said.

"But initially it was something that then contributed to those initial delays.

"Last weekend Dover really suffered because of all that congestion, but we’ve put traffic management plans in place now so again things can flow through Dover and it can still function as a town, and the Port of Dover and Eurotunnel can operate as they need to.”