The snow continues to cause problems across Sittingbourne today (Friday).

The treacherous conditions saw 31 schools, nurseries and children's centres close for the day compared to 25 yesterday and just a handful on Wednesday.

Motorists are still being advised not to travel unless essential

The M2 is passable with care and a broken down HGV in lane 1 of the A249 at the top of Detling Hill is currently causing problems for motorists.

Commuters are still bearing the brunt of the chaos.

Southeastern Trains cancelled all services yesterday but today a reduced timetable has been brought into force meaning trains to London stations are running every half hour. A bus service is replacing the Sittingbourne to Sheerness service.

The High Speed timetable remains and passengers are able to use the trains at no extra cost.

Jon Hay-Campbell, spokesman for the train company, said: "We are getting a service along but the weather conditions are still bad so there may still be delays and possible cancellations for customers."

Rubbish collections have been suspended by Swale council.

The advice to residents is to continue putting their bins out on collection day and they will be collected as soon as possible.

A spokesman for Swale council said: "As things currently stand the roads are too hazardous to resume collections, as there is a big risk of our freighters sliding on the ice.

"We fully appreciate that this is not ideal but we are obviously monitoring the conditions all the time.

"If we are in a position to resume collections later on today we will aim to collect as many green bins (household waste) as possible. Our priority will be uncollected bins from earlier this week, along with today's scheduled collections.

"For the time being there will be no outstanding blue bin (recycling) collections, outstanding brown bin (garden waste) collections or bulky collections, until we have caught up.

"We hope to catch up on clinical waste collections today, as well as making today's scheduled collections.

"We also have plans to make outstanding collections on Saturday, obviously subject to weather conditions."

For further information and updates visit www.swale.gov.uk/snow or call 01795 417850

Road conditions and travel information is available on Kent Police's website www.kent.police.uk, and also on the Highways Agency website http://www.highways.gov.uk

For information on weather conditions visit the Met Office website at http://metroffice.gov.uk

Follow Kent Police on Twitter @kent_police and on its website http://www.kent.police.uk which is being updated around the clock with the latest advice.

Send your snow photos to sittingbourne@thekmgroup.co.uk

ADVICE

Snowballing can be fun but keep it safe.

That's the message from the Community Safety Partnership as snow descends on Swale.

Snowball fights can escalate to the point of anti-social behaviour prompting calls to the ASB hotline and police so some simple advice has been issued to make sure snowballs don't cause any harm.

Don't throw snowballs at traffic, do not throw snowballs with ice or stones in them and don't throw them at people's property.