Additional reporting by Bartholomew Hall

After 700,000 man-hours of work, the Stockbury flyover has seen its first drivers use the 568m stretch of road which forms part of the new-look A249.

We sent reporter Joe Crossley to check out the multi-million-pound crossover as it nears completion.

Motorists have been complaining for years about traffic jams at the Stockbury roundabout.

I have been one such driver, sitting in queues going back to Key Street on the way to work thinking “When will this be over?”

Well, from today this congestion should ease thanks to the opening of the flyover – the flagship part of the £92 million improvement works.

One lane heading towards Maidstone has opened today (Thursday).

Then tomorrow (Friday), a lane on the other side, heading to Sittingbourne and Sheppey, will also be opened.

All lanes will be opened once final touches have been applied - but a completion date was yet to be agreed.

Once running at full capacity, the flyover is expected to have on average 25,000 vehicles drive across it every day.

The National Highways scheme promises not only to reduce congestion but also to improve safety.

The A249 is one of the country's worst accident blackspots but planners predict the new layout will bring down crashes by a third.

So as someone with a vested interest in the scheme, I wanted to see how it all looked before vehicles started using the flyover.

I headed to the John Graham Construction compound, off Maidstone Road - it’s a large building which is surprisingly only temporary and will come down once the works are fully wrapped up in June.

After being briefed by safety advisors and donning a high-vis vest and a hard hat I was ferried away from the compound in a highway maintenance car and we embarked on a five-minute drive to the flyover itself.

We headed around the cones marking off the works zone and onto the 7.5-metre-tall structure.

While I was the first member of the press to be on the newly-completed road I was certainly not the first person on it, with workers still laying Tarmac at 2am that day.

From the lofty height, I could see how the new layout, despite it being at 11am, was busy as always.

After pilling out of the vehicle and while waiting for the crossing of the first vehicle I spoke to National Highways project manager Dan Rollinson.

He has overseen the 1,100 people who have worked on the scheme since work began in September 2021.

It is his first time at the helm of an entire project although he's also worked on changes to the M20 at Ashford and the A2 at Blean and Ebbsfleet.

But he has been with the project through the planning stages – which saw the first proposals unveiled in 2019 – and so says he “couldn’t be happier” to see it nearing completion.

“I worked on this scheme when I was a business management graduate, probably five years ago,” he added, “So I was aware of the scheme and I knew it when it was in the design phase.

“I also worked on it when we went through a public inquiry so I've seen it, I've seen the whole lifecycle of it.

“To be standing here today, knowing that by tomorrow we'll have the flyover working in traffic is amazing. I couldn't be happier.”

Dan was particularly happy that it will make the road safer by improving traffic flow.

Some 1,430 concrete panels – most of which were sourced locally – were used to build the flyover which aims to keep A249 motorists moving and the old roundabout, linking with Junction 5 of the M2, has been extended.

Two new slip roads have also been created, one for vehicles heading from the Maidstone-bound A249 to the London-bound M2 and another from the Sheppey-bound A249 to the M2 coastbound.

This all works to ease the queues.

“A lot of safety incidents are born out of the fact there's a lot of traffic,” he explained. “So what you get is a lot of minor shunts and bumps as people are queuing.

“By making the traffic flow more reliably and smoother it eliminates a lot of that risk.

“Alongside that, we've also closed a couple of key hotspots around the junction where traffic has been joining high-speed traffic and we've made some amendments which make it much safer to move around the junction as well.”

To make these improvements a huge amount of excess material from excavations was produced – approximately 550,000 tonnes – which would normally go to landfill.

However, National Highways agreed on a deal with the Homes England site in Queenborough to take 260,000 tonnes of this material there which saw funds being saved but also a substantial carbon reduction.

Meanwhile, the rest of the waste has been taken to other similar sites.

While the project has been delivered on time, there have been difficulties that the contractor John Graham has had to contend with.

Dan added: “By far the hardest part of any scheme, but particularly around here, is finding that balance between delivering at pace and delivering efficiently but also minimising the disruption to the travelling public.

“As anybody who knows, this is a really congested junction, especially during peak hours.

“One of our priorities is to keep people moving, which we've managed to do successfully throughout the entire duration of the scheme.”

As Dan finished explaining the project we were told that the first vehicle was about to start its crossing heading from Maidstone towards Sittingbourne.

It was a cultivation tractor driven by farm worker Matt Barnes.

The 40-year-old has worked at A Hinge & Sons in Borden for 19 years and has been an avid backer of the scheme.

During the project, Matt, who lives in Borden, has posted updates in a social media group which has 13,500 members.

As his tractor drove by he waved to the cameras and people who had worked on the project and had been invited to watch.

I caught up with Matt after his drive and he was beaming from ear to ear. He said: “It's so nice to be part of it and it felt really good to drive over it.

“I've kept tight-lipped because I've known for a couple of weeks that it's been spoken about. I've Cllr James Hunt to thank as he was the one who came up with the idea and nominated me.”

Matt was not only excited by being the first member of the public to drive over the flyover but also because of the benefits that it promises.

“These improvement works have been needed on this junction for at least 15 to 20 years,” he said.

“Coming out of the smaller junctions, Chestnut Street and Oad Street and trying to cross the A249 is hard work and particularly dangerous at times when there were no breaks in traffic.

“So things needed to be done. The main benefit is safety – getting in and out of junctions with bigger machines to produce people's food.

“So it’ll be safer and faster because we were getting held up in queues for an hour or two here and there.

“It means that the farm then has to have more people to go about its daily business. So it's helped the company.”

After our chat, Matt hurried back to his tractor and headed back to his farm from where he can see the flyover.

And with that, I was called to jump in one of the trucks that would be taking me back to the compound – ending my time on the flyover.

However, I’ll be driving past it most days and already – one day in – I have seen my journey time rapidly reduced.

Thanks to the easing of traffic I was on the M2 heading to Medway from Key Street within minutes rather than the half an hour wait I usually have to sit through.

While this part of the work is almost over – with some painting still needing to be done before all four lanes on the flyover will be open – the South Green Link Road still needs to be finished as well as landscaping and the installation of signage.

The project as a whole, including landscaping, is expected to be finished by June next year. The original completion date was expected to be late 2024.

From 8pm tonight (Thursday) the Sittingbourne-bound A249 will be closed between Church Hill and the Stockbury roundabout.

Motorists can divert via the M20, A229 Blue Bell Hill, M2, A249.

There will be closed signs on the A249 at the M20 Junction 7, advising of the diversion.

Drivers on the A249 itself and surrounding villages should join the A249 as normal.

Non-motorway traffic should use Sheppey Way, A2, A229, A249 when the closures are in place.

More overnight closures are to come but these will be announced closer to the time by National Highways.