THE government is expected to approve a new motorway junction at Ashford

to relieve pressure on junction 10, the M20 Lacton interchange at Willesborough.

This is so overloaded that the Government's Highways Agency has severely limited planned new development that would use it.

The agency's announcement that it aims to increase junction capacity at Willesborough comes days before Housing Minister Jeff Rooker is due in Ashford to hear the results of the two-year study into Ashford's future development potential.

This is seen as highly significant as the traffic snarl-up at Junction 10 is already stifling Ashford's growth at a time when the Government wants Ashford to expand at least twice as fast as it is now.

It is its own Highways Agency that has decreed that big housing developments, such as those planned for Bushy Royds, Willesborough, and Cheeseman's Green, Mersham, can proceed at only 20 per cent of what is proposed until the existing junction's lanes are widened; expected to be 2004.

Business and industrial development at Waterbrook, Sevington is similarly curbed.

After these improvements only 60 per cent of such developments can proceed until a new junction is provided, the agency has said.

In his letter to Ashford council, announcing further junction capacity at Ashford, Mark Kumar, The Highways Agency's Kent manager, says he will include a scheme for this in the Agency's national 10-year major roads programme, to be announced next spring. It will be, based on the results of the Ashford Future study, he says.

No-one is saying exactly where a new junction would be sited but it is expected to be closer to Willesborough than Mersham.