Catch up with all the news from across the county with Oliver Leader De Saxe.
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00:00Good evening and welcome to Kentonite live here on KMTV.
00:28I'm Oliver, leader of the SACs and here are your top stories on Monday the 21st of October.
00:34Dartford delays, fiery lorry crash in M25 causes all day closures from Surrey to Kent.
00:42Could it be you? Medway council says hundreds aren't claiming their pension credit despite
00:48being eligible. There's a possibility that you're entitled to a pension credit
00:52top-up which is worth an extra nearly £4,000 a year.
00:56And play-making police, Sheppey teams giving free football to Basil evening boredom.
01:03Over each week we've seen a group that's consistently come down,
01:06they've engaged really well with us.
01:08But first tonight, the M25 has been gridlocked today after a Tesco's lorry
01:23crashed across several lanes last night causing severe traffic delays.
01:28The burning vehicle had hit a barrier before coming to an abrupt stop.
01:33The driver has only suffered minor injuries but the resulting closures have hurt travel times
01:39across Kent and the wider south east as Fiona Derwood has been finding out.
01:44There was a huge accident at the M25 over the weekend on Sunday night at 10pm where a Tesco
01:50lorry burst into flames after colliding with the central barrier between junction 5 and 6 near
01:54Godston. The HGV exploded but thankfully an ambulance was driving behind and the crew
01:59stopped to assist. It's now been reported that the driver only had minor injuries after the crash.
02:05Fire crews were on the scene as well with six of them being joined by South East Ambulance Service
02:09and Surrey Police Officers. They put out the flames in the morning with only one engine
02:13remaining at 7am. The stretch of road has been reported to need resurfacing and throughout the
02:18day the stretch has been fully closed. Anyone hoping to get from Kent to that side of the M25
02:23or the other way around has been advised to seek a different route with the closure likely to stay
02:28until around midday. And it's even driven some road users to question the infrastructure of
02:33routes into Kent with ex-user Russ tweeting that the Dartford Tunnel has had to close some of its
02:38lanes and with the crash on the M25 the Lower Thames Crossing might have come in handy as he
02:44says it can take up to five hours to get out of Kent. Both routes into the county have been heavily
02:49affected with the junction joining the M20 to the M25 closed around Chipstead all the way to
02:55Addington and the M25A2 junction near the Dartford Crossing is experiencing severe delays all along
03:01the A2 into Kent. Well Finn joins me in the studio now. Finn what more can you tell us about the crash?
03:08Well the very latest news is that the crash was caused because of debris on the carriageway that
03:14caused it to overturn and just completely go across those lanes. Like I mentioned earlier the driver
03:20thankfully has only minor injuries. And are there still delays? We've seen those massive tailbacks
03:26is that still a problem up there? Yes so the original reports that we had coming in was that
03:31the road closures would last until midday today. However well we're still here
03:40and the motorway has that section of the motorway has been shut for 17 hours. We can have a look
03:46actually at some of the current traffic displayed on Google Maps. Despite it being taken around 5pm
03:51today there's not really much change here. The road is still closed from that junction at Godstone
03:56all the way to junction 6 by Rotherham Heath. But for Kent drivers the trickiest part will be
04:01one of the lanes in the Dartford Crossing having to be shut because of a hydraulic leak.
04:06Now what that means is it's caused mass delays around the entire junction with a closed road
04:11you can see there if you're heading westbound on the A2. The numbers are currently 60 minutes
04:17for delays clockwise around the M25 and 45 minutes around the A2. So lots of delays
04:24up in that part of Kent then we'll be following this closely. Next tonight motorists in Margate
04:31have been left fearing for their safety after a large confused looking stag caused cars to slam
04:37their brakes on over the weekend. The animal was seen on Saturday morning and people have said they
04:44came close to hitting the distressed deer seen on your screens right now with their cars almost
04:49causing serious injuries. Residents in Thanet are shocked with the discovery with Liz Miller even
04:55saying she has never even seen one in the wild in her 36 years of living in the area. It's believed
05:02the possibly wild territorial deer is looking for a mate and drivers are encouraged to remain
05:08vigilant while in the area and around fields. Next tonight a driver has had a lucky escape in Ashford
05:16after his Range Rover crashed into a river this morning. Pictures on screen show the car being
05:23lifted out of the Great Stour just off Mace Lane this afternoon after crashing through the railings
05:29and a black saloon was also involved in the accident. You can see the damage on screen right
05:33now and nearly a dozen emergency vehicles were called to the scene including two fire engines
05:40and the driver has to be taken to hospital but has suffered no serious injuries. And now Medway
05:47counts say hundreds of pensioners in the five towns could be missing out on pension credits
05:52to support them with the cost of living crisis. The benefit could mean nearly an extra four
05:58hundred thousand pounds four thousand pounds a year and today charities have come together in
06:02Chatham to showcase the support that people can access. With many still struggling what's available
06:08for those who aren't eligible? A showcase of support for those struggling to make ends meet.
06:14Here at the Pentagon Centre in Chatham Medway Council have been on a mission to help people get
06:21access to pension benefits they're entitled to. Nearly 900,000 people across the UK could be
06:29claiming pension credits and that means here in the five towns more than 400 aren't getting the
06:36access to the support they need. You might have had circumstances in your life where you couldn't
06:43pay all of the national insurance contributions that were available to you. You might have not
06:48been well enough to work for part of your life. Lots of people haven't got private pensions. All
06:53of those people there's a possibility that you're entitled to a pension credit top-up which is worth
06:58an extra nearly four thousand pounds a year and if it's an entitlement you should be claiming.
07:04But as you can see around me it's not just support around pension credits. Many people coming down
07:10here are elderly but may not actually be eligible. But looking for other forms of support be it from
07:17heating or additional services and that's kind of the point of this event to provide a community
07:24space where people can come together to find what they need. Two of those getting support here today
07:30were John and Carol Kemsley. Both in their 60s but not quite at pension age. The ex-couples say there
07:38are gaps in support for older people like them who aren't eligible for pension credit full stop.
07:45Yeah I mean I'm only 64 but it's hitting me as well. I'm starting to say well where do I go for
07:57I don't yet live out the food banks but I'm only a little bit away. At times I feel useless.
08:05I can't find work. I can't do this. I can't do that. I'm thinking what's the point of being here?
08:11With one week to go until the budget many will be wondering what the government has in store
08:17to help Kent's aging population. But for now the pension credit application deadline
08:22is at the end of December so you still have time to check if you may be eligible.
08:29Oliver leads the sats for KNTV in Medway. Worth checking if you are eligible there. But now
08:36portholes are being made worse by lorries using Kent's roads to get to Europe. That's according
08:41to Kent County Council which believes the government funding should be made fairer to
08:46reflect this. It comes as the AA have reported more than 10,000 porthole call outs in the last
08:52year. Local democracy reporter Gabriel Morris has the story. There's a scourge of motorists on Kent
09:04roads. But could portholes be getting worse in the county because of foreign lorries and tourist
09:10traffic heading to European gateways? Most lorries will keep to the motorways which are repaired by
09:17national highways. But Kent County Council believes that some of the EU bound freight
09:22ends up on some of the 5,000 miles of roads they manage and that's causing them to get worse.
09:28We have a lot of foreign freight coming in. Perhaps not contributing in a way that we would
09:32like to the upkeep of our roads and they are of course damaging them as much as any other traffic.
09:36So I think that is a conversation to be had with government. And as always we need to make clear
09:40to government we are not just another county. We're a large county. One and a half million plus
09:46people. That is on the front line when it comes to all of these vehicles coming in and causing
09:50damage. So we need to make the most of that and make our voices heard at Westminster and Whitehall.
09:55Drivers want to see changes. Many saying they've had punctures, wheel damage and suspension
10:00problems. It's really costly because when you look at the cost of changing a tyre.
10:04Tyres are not cheap nowadays. Rubber, rubber, the cost of rubber just keeps on going up and
10:09I think for the last car that happened to me it cost what? 300 quid? Worse, 100% worse.
10:18And you're constantly always going down the same roads and nothing's been done about it.
10:23Yeah, me and my daughter have both had damage to our cars because of potholes.
10:28Yeah. And was that expensive? It was and we wrote to the council and we got no help.
10:34Latest AA figures show they've been called to around 10,000 more breakdowns from last year.
10:40They say it's common for patrols to be sent to the same location in Kent.
10:44But also you do have to look at how you are using that money and are you using it in the
10:51most effective way. As I understand Kent spends almost as much on reactive, just patching up
10:59roads as they do on the kind of proactive, the longer term maintenance. And sometimes the patching
11:08up is counterproductive. It's so deep that that pothole reappears every couple of months.
11:15Labour has promised to fix one million more potholes per year.
11:19Further details could be in the budget at the end of the month. But a county council
11:24wonders how far that will go with freight traffic to the continent set to increase
11:29in the coming years. Gabriel Morris in Maidstone.
11:33Now after the break, the Kent police plan to use football to kick anti-social behaviour in Sheppey.
11:39Kent's fight against Asian hornets and what's coming up on Invicta Sport
11:43after Kent tonight. All that and more after the break. See you in a few minutes.
14:49You.
14:50You.
15:12Welcome back to Kent tonight, live here on KMTV. And now the Isle of Sheppey has a problem with
15:19young people loitering around its town centre. And many residents complain there's nothing for
15:24those young people to do. Well, the local police have decided to sort the problem out themselves,
15:30getting £500 from a police budget to set up a community football programme.
15:35Phil McDermott will be finding out how the beautiful game is getting young people to
15:39kick anti-social behaviour in Sheppey. Wake up, go to school and then, well,
15:45in Sheppey, young people don't really know. Teenagers often don't have anything to do
15:49after school, with many hanging around the local McDonald's for cheap food and free Wi-Fi.
15:54Well, when residents complained about local teenagers not having anything to do,
15:58I think the last thing they expected was for the local constable to set up a five-a-side arena in
16:03the park. With standard activities like cadets and sports clubs costing money,
16:07PC Hughes wanted to give the community something they could do for free.
16:11It's quite a impoverished area, so people said it costs money to do those things and
16:16not everyone can afford that. So, we got in contact with Sports Connect, who just basically
16:22organise free sports sessions in the community. I said how much it would be to fund them to come
16:29in and do a programme in Sheerness. And then through the Home Office budget, we've got to
16:34tackle kind of hotspots for anti-social behaviour. We've managed to secure some funding for a 12-week
16:39programme in Sheerness, which is what's running at the moment.
16:43The intention was also to target young people they knew were engaging in anti-social behaviour
16:47and low-level criminal offences, delivering letters to parents and inviting the teenagers
16:52to the sessions. The activity was originally going to run until the end of October,
16:56but Sports Connect extended them until at least Christmas and have begun plans to set up a
17:01similar scheme in Minster after reports of anti-social behaviour in the area.
17:06Over 100 young people so far have taken part across the time the sessions have run,
17:10with no pre-booking required and any age allowed to turn up and play.
17:14The constables received £5,000 from the Hotspot Policing Problem Solving Budget to address the
17:19issue, teaming up with Sports Connect, an organisation that provides sports as a way
17:24to bring communities together and create opportunities for those in Kent.
17:28So, we've had various age groups come down. We've had as young as six. We've had some of the older
17:34children come down as well. It's been a real mixed age and ability and they've all really
17:40gelled together as they've taken part in the project. Over each week, we've seen a group
17:45that's consistently come down. They've engaged really well with us at Sports Connect. We've
17:51really got to know a bit more about them as well and opportunities that we can provide
17:54further beyond these sessions, so it's really exciting to grow that rapport with the young
17:58people over here. The organisers have seen some young people see the event take
18:03part and become regulars, who attend after school on a Wednesday and will talk to the
18:07officers, which they say helps the community feel of the scheme. With the event being free
18:12and on every week, they say it can provide consistency to young people who lack structure
18:16in their day-to-day and has changed the behaviour of some for the better.
18:20Finn McDermid for KMTV in Sheppey.
18:23Now, Kent Beekeepers Association have launched a new campaign to fight against invasive Asian
18:30hornets. The new look-up campaign comes as figures show that 2024 had the second highest
18:36number of sightings since the species first arrived in 2016. The campaign encourages the
18:42public to use the Asian Hornet app to report nests that are previously hidden over the summer.
18:48Although the hornets pose no more risk to us than our own British hornets,
18:52they do threaten our honeybee populations, with just one Asian hornet able to eat up to 50 bees
18:58in a day. That's quite shocking. Now, don't forget you can keep up to date with all your
19:04latest stories across Kent by logging on to our website, KMTV.co.uk. There you'll be able to find
19:11all our reports, including this one about a seizure of thousands of illegal tobacco products,
19:16vapes and shisha that was being sold across Kent.
19:20OK, so we're here in our secure property store and I'll just show you what we've
19:23taken in the last couple of days. We're out on a multi-operational job with other
19:30enforcement agencies and what you can see here and here is the illegal tobacco that was seized
19:36from three premises in the morning. All of these goods were hidden, so when you walk into a shop
19:42you're not going to see these on display. These are hidden behind false walls, behind false doors,
19:48under sinks, things like that. And this one using a key card.
19:55It's one of the biggest operations targeting the sale of illegal tobacco by Kent trading standards.
20:01All this found in just five shops across Maidstone, Sittingbourne and Dover, sniffed out by trained
20:07dogs.
20:19£10,000 was seized, as well as 163 vapes, 150,000 cigarettes, around 75kg of hand-rolling
20:29tobacco and 160 packets of shisha, all illegal. And this isn't actually everything you found
20:37over those two days? No, this is probably about a third of what we found. Other agencies that
20:42we're working with have taken some of the other product that was found during those two days of
20:46operation. You may actually recognise some of this packaging, the logos, the branding and a key thing
20:52here, the colours. Now the tobacco regulation says that all cigarettes have to be sold in that olive
20:58green packaging that we see in the shops. But another key thing here that lets officers know
21:03that this is illegal is that some of the language on here, some of the warnings,
21:08are actually not even in English. For legal reasons, we can't identify the shops that were
21:14raided and we can't see for certain if they're even closed. And it's because of the wider
21:19criminality involved in the illegal tobacco trade. For a trading standards authority,
21:24at the moment the legislation we have only allows us to seize the product. We can then pursue
21:29inquiries. We can't have the person arrested. If there are other issues going on then the police
21:35could arrest people for other offences. While enforcement action is ongoing, for the moment
21:41these products have been removed from the shelves, kept off the streets and taken out of the hands
21:47of criminal gangs. Abi Hook for KMTV.
21:53Now the weather.
22:00Clear skies tonight, highs of 11 degrees in Margate and Dover, lows of nine in Tunbridge,
22:06Wales. Staying clear into tomorrow morning, brisk across the country, ranging from around 8 to 11
22:12degrees. But into the afternoon it's warming up, getting a bit cloudy though, with temperatures
22:17averaging at 16, some mild wind and the next few days dry with some clouds on Wednesday.
22:23It's clear skies on Thursday, rain on Friday.
22:35After the break, don't forget there's a brand new episode of Invictus Sport coming up
22:39with all the latest headlines from across the county. I'm joined now by the show's producer
22:43Bartholomew Hall. But first, you have something to tell us about racism in football here in the county.
22:49Yeah, that's right. So the EFL has launched its campaign this week. It's called the Together
22:55Against Racism campaign. It's encouraging players, managers, fans to all use their voices to drive
23:01change. Now spearheading that is Omar Bogle. He's a striker. He currently plays for Cru Alexander.
23:07Now he's spoken out about the moment that he was racially abused whilst playing against
23:12Gillingham at the time he was playing for Newport County. And he actually contributed to Newport's
23:17win over Gillingham last season. And we heavily reported on it at the time. A spectator decided
23:23to imitate a monkey towards him at that moment. And that spectator was, of course,
23:28ejected from the stadium before being charged, hit with a fine, which was paid to Mr Bogle,
23:33I believe, £200. And of course, given a lifelong ban. So very strong movements there,
23:38not only from the police, but strong decision making from Gillingham as well. And Omar Bogle
23:43has been speaking about this to the EFL. And we can hear a clip from that now.
23:47And it came out. The grief I was getting, it was like it didn't really make any sense,
23:51obviously. But for Newport at the time, I was the most important player or the best player,
23:55most influential, whatever people want to say. But obviously, all the kind of bad energy and
24:00the abuse and swearing and jeering and stuff like that, it was all geared towards me. And
24:07I kind of know what that is. And for me to try and explain that to anyone else,
24:13they might not understand. And I was respectfully, unless you look like me,
24:16then you might be able to resonate with it. But people should report it, at least if obviously
24:20you don't feel like you're strong enough to go and confront that person yourself.
24:24You should at least report it to the security that's there or the authorities, at the very least.
24:30And we should just say that Gillingham said at the time that there's no place for any manner of
24:34discriminatory, offensive or abusive behaviour or language of any kind inside our ground.
24:40But moving on, of course, after the break, there is another episode of Invicta Sport. We've got
24:43plenty to talk about tonight. We've got a bit of a focus on pro wrestling. There's a
24:50Halloween themed event coming up in Thanet towards the end of this month. Really exciting one.
24:56Finn sat down with two of the organisers who are actually taking part in it. We can hear a
25:00little sneak peek of that now too. You know, maybe people just really want to represent the
25:03area. So I love that. I love being a part of that. And it just really helps spur on the
25:08enjoyment for me, being a performer, being a wrestler, that when you feed off the energy,
25:13I think it's like any kind of performance that you just feed off of the energy. And I think Kent
25:18fans and Kent wrestlers really give a good amount of emotion and good amount of, yeah, just a good
25:23buzz and a good energy that makes me, you know, really want to give it a hundred percent.
25:27All that and plenty more to come after the break, including, of course, all the football highlights
25:31and action replay, my favourite part of the show. Very, very excited Bartholomew. See you after the
25:36break. And finally, a primary school in Chatham has revealed its new library after it was destroyed
25:43in a devastating flood over a year ago. The renovation comes after 2000 books, school
25:49computers and art supplies were destroyed after the school's drainage system overflowed due to a
25:55heavy rainstorm. Well, the mayor of Medway visited St Benedict's Catholic Primary School
25:59to officially open the new facilities and spoke to excited pupils about his love for reading
26:04and the importance of the hobby. You can see them on screen right now. It looked very, very lovely.
26:10But of course, that's everything we have time for on this programme of Kent tonight. There's more
26:16news, maybe just for Kent throughout the evening, of course, in Victor Sport just after the break
26:21with Bartholomew Hall. In the meantime, keep up to date with all our news on our website,
26:25kentv.co.uk. And of course, on your social timelines, Facebook, Instagram and X. It's a story
26:33we should be covering. Just get in touch as well. But for now, from me, good evening.
27:51you
28:21you
28:51you