Road closures postponed because of the Kent County Show are the reason hundreds of motorists are facing hours of delays on the M2 and A249 for a second day.

That’s National Highways’ explanation for the gridlock on main routes into Medway, Sheppey, Sittingbourne and Maidstone caused by the closure of a dedicated link between the M2 Junction 5 coastbound exit and the A249 Sheppey-bound by the Stockbury Roundabout.

It was shut at 8pm on Wednesday and will remain closed until 8pm on Sunday.

A spokesman for National Highways explained: “Due to the Kent County Show, we were unable to conduct the closure last weekend.

“This means that we have had to condense the work into this week and have the dedicated slip road and lane closure in place from Wednesday evening (12 July) as opposed to the usual Friday evening (14 July).”

Because of the popularity of the three-day Kent County Show, which was hosted at Detling Hill Showground, the closure was pushed back as a promise to prevent long queues for those heading to the event last weekend.

Dan Rollinson, National Highways’ project lead for the M2 junction 5 work, said: “Safety is our number one priority, and we appreciate there is never a good time to close part of the slip road, so we are grateful for people's patience while we deliver this important reconstruction scheme at Junction 5.

"Due to the limited queuing capacity on the slip road, the traffic lights are needed for safety reasons, to prevent as much traffic as possible queuing back onto the M2 mainline.

“These critical works will enable us to create a safe working room to construct the retaining walls on the north side of the roundabout.

“Not only this, but it will also allow us to maintain two lanes of traffic in either direction in the coming months during the next phase of the project, limiting the impact on the travelling public.”

A spokesman for National Highways explained it tries to plan as much work as possible in this manner to cause the least possible disruption for road users.

Because the agency was unable to conduct the closure last weekend the spokesman explained that it had to condense the work into this week and have the dedicated slip road and lane closure in place from a Wednesday instead of a usual Friday closure.

Reports claim there are currently long delays and queueing traffic on the A249 in both directions at the Stockbury Roundabout.

There is also congestion stretching back a mile on either side, taking 10 minutes, and 20 minutes back along the M2 Coastbound.

National Highwasy has confirmed that everything’s on schedule to reopen the junction fully in the early hours of Monday morning.

The spokesman said: “On Monday traffic will be using the new Sheppey-bound merge.

“This work, and the closure, means we can keep two lanes of traffic running through the junction during the next phase of our works.

“We’re really sorry about the congestion the closure has caused, but it means there’ll be less disruption over the next few months. We’ve created a temporary tie-in from the roundabout onto the Sheppey-bound A249 slip road and simply couldn’t do that without closing the dedicated link from the eastbound slip road onto the norbound A249.

Originally, we planned to do this over two weekends, but that would have affected the Kent County Show, so we’ve condensed the work into this week.

We’re using temporary traffic lights on the roundabout (at the bottom of the eastbound slip road) to control the flow of traffic and for safety reasons. It’s a short slip road and there’s very little room for queuing. There are only two lanes on the M2 at this point too, so we need to make sure traffic doesn’t back up onto the motorway.

We recognise there has been significant congestion over the last two days and some congestion will continue over the weekend. We’d really like to thank all those impacted for their continued patience and support during this work.

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