HOME is where the heart is - and residents of one village at the centre of an identity crisis know their hearts lie with Kent’s county town.

Residents in Bredhurst feel they are living in no-man’s land - electing a member to Maidstone Borough Council, yet being labelled as part of Medway for phone and postal purposes.

In an opinion poll carried out for the parish plan, 54 per cent of villagers said they would like to change their dialling code from 01634 to 01622 and drop "Gillingham" from their postal address. Many do not use Gillingham already, preferring to leave it at "Bredhurst, Kent".

Cllr Suresh Khanna, chairman of Bredhurst Parish Council, said: "We are part of Maidstone borough, to whom we pay our taxes. People hate being thought of as part of Gillingham. We are on the North Downs in an area of outstanding natural beauty. It’s a part of Maidstone."

The mis-labelling hurts not only the villagers’ pride, but also their pockets.

Mr Khanna said: "Property prices are affected by the fact that we are thought of as part of Gillingham. They’re a bit more expensive than Gillingham when it comes to buying, but when it comes to selling, estate agents suck their teeth and say: 'You’re part of Gillingham'."

To the residents of Bredhurst, it has seemed at times that even Maidstone council has forgotten them.

Mr Khanna said: "When we prepared our parish plan and sent it to Maidstone Borough Council, some of them admitted to me that they didn’t know where Bredhurst was.

"Our residents have had the experience of ringing up and complaining about fly-tipping, and some of them were told: 'Why don’t you ring Medway Council?'

"When we did a survey of everybody in the village, this was one of the outcomes: to seek greater identification with Maidstone."