A council has been forced to push back the submission of its local plan again amid ongoing delays to major infrastructure projects it says are "out of its hands".

Cabinet members for Gravesham council met on January 3 to provide an update on the proposed timetable which is now three years behind schedule.

The cabinet report states progress on the emerging local plan was initially delayed due to the pandemic which meant consultations did not take place until almost a year after they were supposed to.

There has been further set-backs in the availability of a transport model created by Kent County Council (KCC) and how it fits in with National Highway's predictions for Lower Thames Crossing traffic.

A highways model is needed as part of a local plan as it predicts traffic flows, maps out the local infrastructure and tests the impact on the roads if developments were to go ahead.

Cabinet member for strategic environment, Cllr Lauren Sullivan (Lab), said: "Traffic modelling is an essential part of the development of any local plan.

"Without valid traffic modelling, any draft local plan stands to be rejected as incomplete by government inspectors at the examination stage.

"As we are not the highways authority, we are dependent on KCC for the creation of the transport model, its validation and the running of the model.

"KCC’s traffic modelling for Gravesham has been delayed for a number of reasons outside of our control, and there is still a considerable amount of work to do."

According to the report, the transport model was expected in Autumn 2020 but due to "a number of reasons" it took longer and was pushed back three times.

It adds work needed to get results also "increased in scale and time" as additional traffic counts were undertaken across Gravesham so the model met national requirements.

Instead of taking three to four months, the process lasted longer than a year.

Cllr Sullivan added: "This is exacerbated by the fact that National Highways wishes to ensure the model fits with its predicted traffic flows to and from the Lower Thames Crossing should it go ahead, and it will need to validate KCC’s model before we can progress to the next stages in the development of our local plan.

"As such, cabinet has accepted that we have no alternative but to push back the timetable for the progression of our local plan, and we now expect to go out for the next round of public consultation in the autumn of this year.

"That would then see our submission of the plan to government in the spring of 2024, with a public examination anticipated later that summer.

"This further delay in the progression of our local plan is regrettable but is completely out of our hands at this point."

The report added that it would be "impossible" for council officers to say which developments can happen without the initial results from the transport model.

A spokesman for National Highways said: "We have provided Gravesham council with forecasts that set out the changes in traffic flows that we expect to occur once the Lower Thames Crossing opens, and additional traffic data to support the development of its local plan.

"This information was first provided in 2019, and updated in 2022, and now that an application for a development consent order has been accepted for examination by the Planning Inspectorate the council has more certainty over the changes to the road network that might arise as a result of the new road.

"We will continue to work with Gravesham as its local plan develops and will provide comment on its proposals and the associated forecast impacts at the appropriate stages of consultation and at the examination in public."

The published local plan was originally expected in December 2021 but is now timetabled for December 2024.