Council calls for port weighers
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• Swale Council in Kent is calling for weighbridges to be installed at ports in the county to catch overweight foreign vehicles before they "savage" the county's roads. The council is asking for weighbridges at Dover, Folkestone and Ramsgate rather than upgrading the public weighbridge at Boughton, near Faversham.
Councillor Mike Henderson told Swale's planning committee that East Kent's roads were under threat from trucks with overweight loads: "Instead of lorries being weighed at the docks to see if they are fit to travel on British roads, they have to travel on our roads for 23 miles before they are weighed."
A DOT spokesman says the Boughton weighbridge covers traffic from Ramsgate and Dover and Folkestone. He says it would be too expensive to build new weighbridges at the ports, although he agrees one at Farthing Corner services would be easy for drivers to avoid using back roads. Swale Council is waiting to hear the result of its objection to the planning application to expand the Boughton weighbridge.