DRIVERS will be clobbered by a 50 per cent price hike at the Dartford Crossing when increased charges come into force this weekend.

From 6am on Sunday car drivers will have to pay an extra 50p at the toll booths.

The revised charges, which have put fares for private cars up to £1.50 from £1, officially start at 10pm on Saturday, but crossings between 10pm and 6am are now free.

Meanwhile, drivers in Dartford who have signed up to a local residents’ discount scheme will save 90 per cent, with each trip costing just 20p.

The same applies to residents in Thurrock, some of whom live further from the crossing than much of Gravesham, which was deemed ineligible for the discount. Businesses, even those in Dartford and Thurrock, will also suffer in the new charging scheme, which has increased fees for lorries by almost 30 per cent, to £3.70.

But it seems excluded residents and bosses are still trying to find the cheapest way around the charges. The Highways Agency said the number of applications for DART-Tags, which will keep charges for cars fixed at £1 and knock about 10 per cent off fees for vans and lorries, has rocketed in recent months.

Since July, when a 12-month consultation on the local discount scheme finished, there have been 7,325 applications for the tag, almost five times the usual number received in the same period.The Highways Agency is taking measures to prevent chaos and confusion at the tolls when the charges change.

Extra staff are being drafted in to man the booths from Saturday and deal with any motorists unaware of the changes.

A spokesman said: “We’ve got a strategy in place. We’ve done quite a wide advertising and marketing campaign, we’ve been setting signs on the approach to Dartford warning people, and we’ve tested all the systems at the tolls because a lot of the software needed upgrading.

“We’ve also gone through quite a lot of our stakeholders like the Freight Transport Association to distribute information as well, so we’ve been very proactive in terms of our approach and we are confident we’ve done as much as we can.”