An historic Kent boozer is being demolished to make way for a new-look road system, part of a £16m package of road measures.

But now that we are finally approaching the date when work was scheduled to begin on the new arrangement do people really understand what they are going to get when Maidstone's The Wheatsheaf pub is no more than a dim and distant memory?

Probably not, judging by many comments referring to the "Wheatsheaf Roundabout."

Roundabout it's not.

Instead what the highways authority has planned for this important joining of two of the major arteries into Maidstone looks on paper to be far more complicated.

KCC assures us that once it is installed, we will get used to it soon enough.

The Wheatsheaf merges traffic from the A229 Loose Road to Hastings with that of the A274 Sutton Road to Headcorn.

The plan is for a "reconfigured signalised junction."

The first thing to understand is we might have to start calling the junction something else.

The Wheatsheaf pub which has stood proudly over the junction since 1830 is to be pulled down to make room for the road improvements.

The demolition will be the first sign of work starting, and was scheduled to begin next month. The pub has been a local landmark since 1830 and has been closed since January 2019.

Once it's gone, the nearest business to the junction will be Footsteps Flooring. So The Footsteps junction maybe?

Brian Shingleton, who lives in nearby Cripple Street and is a regular user of the junction, said: "It's a ridiculous scheme. It's quite difficult to understand. There are so many sets of lights, it will very be very confusing for motorists."

This is how it will work.

If you are travelling from Maidstone south towards the A274 Sutton Road, there are initially two lanes, as now.

There will be a set of traffic lights just before the Cranborne Avenue junction on the left.

From there, the inside lane remains a dedicated straight-on lane for Sutton Road.

The outside lane curves to the right for traffic intending to go up the A229, Loose Road, towards Maidstone Fire Station, but first it will potentially be held at another set of traffic lights to allow northbound traffic coming from Sutton Road and heading for town to cross in front.

Traffic travelling north along the Sutton Road, away from the Kent Police HQ, will find a choice of three lanes - one more than currently.

The left-hand lane will become for traffic turning left only, that is traffic wanting to sweep round what would have been the front of the Wheatsheaf pub and slip into the A229 Loose Road heading towards Linton and Hawkhurst.

The other two lanes will continue on to town along what is confusingly also called the Loose Road.

Unfortunately if you live in Cranborne Avenue, you are stymied. Traffic will no longer be able to enter or exit from the junction and will instead have to work its way around to perhaps join at the Plains Avenue junction nearer to town where there will be another set of signals.

For traffic travelling along the Loose Road, towards the town centre there will be two lanes as you approach the junction.

The inside of the left-hand lane will be straight on for Maidstone town centre only.

The outside lane is for straight-on traffic and also for that wanting to turn right and go south along the Sutton Road.

There will be a set of lights before the junction for both lanes, and another set for traffic turning right, where waiting vehicles will queue in a gap between two large islands.

There will also be two pedestrian controlled crossings - one on the northward leg of the junction and one on the southward.

So in reality, the basic principle of the junction will remain similar to the current set-up, but over a more stretched-out space and with one extra lane going into town from Sutton Road and half an extra lane (ie a shared lane) going into town from the Loose Road. The major change is the closure of Cranborne Avenue.

On the face of it, the losers will be traffic from Loose Road wanting to turn into Sutton Road who will now potentially have to wait at two sets of lights instead of one, but whether this proves to be a delay may depend on how well KCC can co-ordinate the various sets of light.

Cranborne Avenue traffic is of course the biggest loser, although KCC bills it as "making a child-friendly cul-de-sac."

There will also be an area of landscaped open space over part of the pub site.

Of course the Wheatsheaf Junction improvement is not planned on its own, but as part of a package of measures.

KCC also intends alterations to the Cripple Street/Loose Road junction at the Swan pub, to the Sutton Road junction with Willington Street and to the Loose Road junction with Armstrong Road.

The total cost is budgeted at £5.63m, excluding the undisclosed sum KCC spent to purchase the Wheatsheaf. It is part of a Maidstone Integrated Transport Package, which in total is costing £16.2m.

KCC predicts that once all the elements are completed there will be a 40% improvement in the morning peak period traffic flows and a 43% improvement in the evening peak period.

But Cllr Brian Clark (Lib Dem) said it was not at all clear whether the traffic modelling took into account the effect of installing traffic lights at Plains Avenue. He said: "That will just add another hold-up and means town-bound traffic will be reduced to one lane, with the second lane for turning right."

Cllr Clark said he wanted to see a breakdown of how the benefit was achieved.

He said: "If it all comes from closing Cranborne Avenue, that could be done quite easily today without a major junction reconfiguration."

Although the KCC website is still advising that work on the junction would start this summer, for completion next summer, the authority has now confirmed the schedule has slipped.

A spokesman said: "We are currently reviewing the delivery programme, especially against the backdrop of other schemes that need to be delivered in Maidstone and for the design to fully incorporate the feedback from the consultation.

"Our priority is starting on the A249 Bearsted Road and KCC is currently looking at road space availability across Maidstone to see when other elements of the programme can then be delivered."

The new modified Wheatsheaf plan is yet to be considered by Maidstone's Joint Transportation Board whose last meeting in April was cancelled. The board is not due to meet again until July.

The government has contributed £3.7m to the cost of the scheme with the rest coming from contributions obtained from housing developers.

MP Helen Grant said she was looking forward to the start of the work and said: "I am especially pleased with plans for the A229 corridor which should ease the journey for so many of us along the Loose Road during peak periods.

"I'm giving a big thumbs up to Kent County Council and Maidstone Borough Council for their mutual co-operation in arriving at this important milestone."

Local resident Mr Shingleton was less optimistic.

He said: "The proposed changes are a total waste of money and will not in any way solve the problem of getting Maidstone moving.

"If anything it will only exasperate the problem.

"As soon as traffic from Loose Road wanting to turn right up Sutton Road backs up across the main flow into town, there will be gridlock.

"This will be the third time KCC will have changed this junction, all to no effect."

You can find further details of the scheme here.

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