Galley Hill Collapse

In April 2023 a section of the A226 on Galley Hill collapsed and the road had to be closed

It is still closed and no timetable has been set for its repair.

The SGRA has been in the forefront of keeping the public informed about progress and holding Kent County Council to account

In April 2024 we organised a public protest at the top of Galley Hill to encourage KCC to make faster progress on repairs. It received widespread press, radio and TV coverage.

The major stumbling block to work starting was getting agreement from the various adjacent landowners.

Whilst not defending the slow action of KCC the key to understanding the difficulties they were experiencing in starting stabilisation work and eventual repairs is a presumption in land ownership law called AD MEDIUM FILUM. This presumes that unless there is Land Registry evidence to the contrary the landowner who has the freehold of land bordering a public highway owns the subsoil underneath the highway up to the middle line of the highway. For historic highways such as the A226 this is nearly always the situation.

As a Highways Authority KCC only has the right to maintain the tarmac surface and stone foundation of the A226. The underlying Chalk is owned by the 3 landowners shown. Therefore the entire collapse site is owned by Broomway Ltd and KCC had to have a licence from them before they could do any work that affects the underlying chalk such as stabilisation work and intrusive survey to determine the cause of the collapse and its suitability for repair as a public Highway. Nothing could happen until this was in place.

It took until the Spring of 2024 to resolve these issues and get work started on stabilising the cliff face and then investigating the structure of the chalk. spine

All the stabilisation work and investigations were completed during the summer of 2024 and we now await the reports from a technical specialist. These are due at the end of October.

The first report will attempt to state the cause of the collapse. This may well be used in evidence for any future court case to recover the costs of the repair.

The second report will present KCC with options for repair.

A significant hurdle will be securing Government funding as KCC does not have the resources to go it alone.