Roads on Sheppey are reportedly returning to normal after major congestion problems earlier today.

The traffic woe began after 9am when Kent Highways started work at the junction of Minster's Lower Road and Barton Hill Drive.

Engineers were there to introduce measures to stop people turning right in and out of Barton Hill.

VIDEO: Traffic using the new lay-out at Barton Hill Drive/Lower Road

This, along with the re-phasing of the lights, is the latest scheme to tackle daily problems with congestion building up between the junction and Cowstead Corner.

However, while the works were going on, hundreds of vehicles were stuck in Minster, Halfway and Brielle Way, Sheerness.

The workers had turned off the traffic lights and erected temporary ones which held on red longer than normal.

This was to allow them to spend time placing a barrier in the middle of the road which stops vehicles turning right from Lower Road into Barton Hill.

At 1pm, traffic began to return to normal as Highways' staff completed their work and left the area.

An engineer at the scene said the work wasn't carried out overnight because it would have been too logistically difficult to get all the personnel and equipment in place then.

Speaking during the height of the traffic problems this morning, motorist John Hammond said he couldn't leave the Island and had to return to his home in Minster.

And Fiona Barnes said on Facebook: "I left Queenborough at 11.30am and didn't get to Minster until 12.15pm.

"Thought I'd go Lower Road to see how it was going but had to turn around as was worse than normal traffic, so then tried Halfway which was also packed so then had to go to Sheerness.

"This was also packed, this Island is a joke for traffic and it's not even busy times yet. Two ambulances even struggled to get through the traffic."

It was also reported BT was carrying out works along the Lower Road and had also established temporary traffic lights.

Retired parish priest the Rev Colin Johnson, 69, from Minster Road, Minster, was trapped in traffic trying to get off the Island at lunchtime.

He stormed: "This is a ludicrous situation to be in in 2016. I turned back when I saw the queue at the bottom of Barton Hill Drive and went along Plover Road to the Lower Road but that was jam-packed, too.

"I ended up turning round and going through Halfway and Queenborough Corner but that was gridlocked with cars, too. It is ridiculous it was clogged up at that time of day. It took me 45 minutes to get to Gillingham.

"If these delays were because of the traffic experiment then I am very disappointed with the result.

"The solution is to dual the Lower Road. It simply isn't wide enough to cope with the amount of traffic using it these days.

"All cars are delayed if a cyclists is in front of them because the road isn't wide enough to let a car overtake."

The new scheme has been introduced to tackle the ongoing Lower Road congestion problems.