A TEACHER is supporting a plan by Kent County Council to make it difficult for motorists from Rainham and Gillingham to take short-cuts on their way to Maidstone.

The county council, backed by Maidstone Borough Council, is planning to install chicanes at Boxley and possibly Bredhurst in a bid to force commuters to drive an additional ten miles a day to get to work.

Villagers are fed up with commuters using the roads past their homes as a rat-run.

The move is being supported by Richard Ash, a teacher at Fort Pitt school at Chatham, who is a Conservative member of Maidstone council.

He told a joint highways committee of county and borough councillors: "We want to make it as awkward as we can for them. They should go straight along the M2 and down Blue Bell Hill. That's what they should do."

The plan is to introduce one of the traffic pinch points between Boxley and the Channel Tunnel rail link tunnel.

Councillors backed the scheme, together with plans to signpost the area as being one of outstanding natural beauty.