Nearly a third of road closures in the county were breaking the rules, a survey has revealed.

An audit of 59 works by a new team of inspectors found that 18 were not complying with the terms of the closure agreement.

This included five closures which were deemed unsafe; three roads closed but no work started; four with incorrect signing and three which could have used alternative traffic management.

The findings were disclosed by Simon Jones, Kent County Council's director of growth, environment and transport in a briefing to members who said they raised "questions and concerns".

Mr Jones said: "A 30% strike rate across this audit is significant for me and I think it's worth a conversation."

The results justified the creation of the inspectorate and the audit "proves what we always suspected or could see with our eyes", said the chairman of KCC transport committee, Cllr Sean Holden.

Cllr Holden and members of the environment and transport cabinet committee had insisted the inspectors be appointed after witnessing clear breaches of the terms under which the county council issued the closure permits.

He added: "We had to do something. It's bad enough when every road seems to have works being done on them, but infuriating for people when it's obvious there nothing going on.

"People are fed up to the back teeth with companies and their sub-contractors clearly breaking the rules and getting away with it."

Cllr Holden aims to crack down on "emergency closures" where companies shut a road but often do not start the work for days.

He also wants the government to massively increase fines to make rule-breaking a "huge expense" to contractors.

He said: "The emergency closures may have something to do with the fact companies do not have to pay out compensation to local businesses affected by them. I suspected this is being grossly abused. But we're onto them now.

"Work must start on an emergency closure within two hours but everyone knows that it often doesn't start for days on end.

"The government needs to massively increase fines because at the moment they are just a business expense factored into the job. They don't care. If they are fined thousands of pounds for transgressions, they will soon get the message."

The inspectorate was created from existing resources and has not cost KCC any extra cash.

The number of closure permits issued by KCC has rocketed in recent years, from 4,000 in 2019 to 12,000 last year.

Much of the increase is driven by house-building, fixing potholes and road maintenance (by KCC), repairs by utility firms and laying new infrastructure.

Cllr Holden said: "If one extrapolates the 12,000 closure figure by the findings of the inspectorate, that means 3,600 of those closures could have been breaking the rules.

"That is wholly, wholly unacceptable."

The concerns raised by Cllr Holden were supported by other councillors.

Conservative Cllr Gary Cooke, who represents south east Maidstone and is also a borough councillor, said: "The system has to change. Central government has to massively increase the fines to act as a deterrent to those companies.

"Unwarranted road closures affect people's lives and their quality of life. Businesses are losing quite significant sums of money."

Margate Labour councillor Barry Lewis cited an example of an "emergency closure" that took 11 months to finish.

Cllr Holden said that he is pressing to find out why so many closure permits are now being issued by KCC.

He added: "We need to look at extending working hours; finding ways to shut works down when there is nothing going on to keep traffic moving.

"A road closure should be the last resort not the first resort and I cannot get a satisfactory explanation why we are issuing three times the number of closure permits as we were a few years ago.

"As a committe we have expressed what we know is the feeling of people across the county and that we have heard the clamour to get something done."

After the government launched a consulation into a massive increase in fines for over-running street works, Kent County Council’s cabinet member for highways and transport, Neil Baker, said: "We have already piloted a pioneering lane rental scheme on some of our roads, which encourages utility companies to work in the mosty efficent way to minmise disruption for the treavelling public.

"I will continue to work with government, the Department for Transport and other stakeholders to find ways we can reduce congestion in order to keep Kent moving."