Kent County Council leader, Paul Carter, has stepped up calls for government funding for a permanent lorry park to replace Operation Stack after a recent fire hit Channel Tunnel capacity.

Lorries backed up along the A20 promted Kent's call for a lorry park. Photo: Philip Toscano / KNP

Restricted to 70% for several months, the fire necessitated the use of Operation Stack, and will continue to ‘on a regular basis over the coming weeks’.

The operation allows up to 800 lorries can be parked in the short term using ‘quick, moveable barriers’ on a section of the M20, but large sections of the motorway sometimes have to be closed and huge volumes of traffic diverted on to local roads.

‘We have identified a site for the lorry park and are doing all the ground work to prepare a planning application,’ said Cllr Carter. ‘But the cost of building the park and running it cannot fall to the Kent taxpayer.’

Kent Police are also working on a version of Operation Stack on the A20 into Dover, for times when ferry capacity is lacking.

But Kent says a planning application for the new lorry park is 12 months away, thanks to the need for investigations over the environmental assessment, which opponents say has been started tardily. A local newspaper also recently obtained a report on the lorry park site, which warned of potential flooding and that protected species occupied the site.

‘Of course, it recognises that this is an area where, potentially, there could be flooding,’ said a council spokesman. ‘That’s the point of doing these things.’