THE M20 is vital to the county's local economy and Kent has learned by painful experience that if you shut this off, you create the business equivalent of cardiac arrest.

But this is exactly what happens every time there's bad weather in the Channel or industrial action across the Channel. Operation Stack may be the only solution we have to deal with the quickly accelerating build-up of HGVs, but it is just not an acceptable solution.

Closing the motorway and turfing off all the non-lorry traffic on to the supporting road network simply spreads heartache and delay throughout the region.

B u sinesses and individuals who have nothing to do with Continental trade end up footing the cost. Not to mention the enormous cost and wasted manpower for Kent Police who have to implement the scheme.

By signing our petition, you can help put pressure on the Government to assist KCC in finding a solution.

Bob Bounds, West Kent senior editor , said: “Readers need to send out a message that we want an end to Stack now.

“We simply can’t continue to have a situation when the county is regularly brought to a standstill at the whim of the French unions or the weather.

“While we accept that the situation is a difficult one and for all the benefits our position brings us, we should expect some drawbacks. But Stack is a crude and cumbersome way of dealing with the logjam of freight.”