The Green Party running a Kent council has been branded “totally clueless” for dropping funding for research into building a bypass.

Community leaders have spent decades campaigning for a “relief road” to connect the A20 and A274 in south-east Maidstone.

But a £1 million pot to investigate the Leeds-Langley link has been scrapped by the Green/Liberal Democrat coalition running Maidstone council.

The Conservatives have flooded the area with leaflets containing a link to an online petition , which they hope will spark a rethink.

If there is sufficient support, the first public meeting on the topic since 2017 will be convened, said one source.

In recent years, a communication breakdown between Maidstone council and Kent County Council (KCC), the highways authority, was blamed in part

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