We live next to Britain’s ‘busiest motorway’…our homes vibrate & we have to clean windows everyday…promises were broken
SUFFERING locals have described the relentless din from traffic thundering along a motorway which even makes their homes vibrate.
Residents of a Kent cul-de-sac say life is being made a misery by cars and lorries roaring along the M20, one of Britain’s busiest motorways.
The people living in Ashford told how sound levels in some back gardens have soared past recommended safety levels of 70 decibels.
The major highway was turned from the dual carriageway A20 into the M20 motorway in 1981 – but locals say it’s now that congestion is causing new heights of noise.
Muhammad Kashref said he was unaware about the extent of the disruption when moving in almost 15 years ago.
He said: “We have one room at the back and in the night we can’t sleep if we don’t close the windows.
“It was my first buy so I didn’t have a clue.
“The noise and dust is a problem. My wife has to clean our windows everyday – and the dust comes indoors as well.
“We can feel the vibration too.”
Nige Wilson, 80, has been living nearby for the past 43 years.
He said: “When we came here, there wasn’t a motorway, it was dual carriageway – so when they built the motorway, it was a ripple effect.”
He recalled how authorities initially tried to curb disruption by laying porous asphalt on the motorway to reduce noise.
Signs then suggested “Noise reduced”, he says – but recent years appear to have upped the volume.
He said: “The authorities were going to put up a noise barrier and they didn’t – they said because you’re only two per cent of the population that is affected and they got the money to spend.
“We’ve all complained.”
Neighbour Margaret Feakins, 80, says she has raised concerns in vain about the noise.
She said: “As long as complainers are not dying, they don’t do anything.”
She told how next-door neighbours put up a fence around their front garden because the M20 noise had become so unbearable.
Her husband Kenneth, also 80, said: “It’s not so much the cars, it’s the lorries.”
More recent arrivals have also raised complaints.
Dana, 27, came to Ashford three years ago, and described her new home so close to the motorway as “fine when you are in the house” – but added: “When you go into the garden, it’s just horrendous.”
Mari Rauks, 51, accepted the din as a “necessary evil” for the convenience of getting to work in nearby Maidstone.
She said: “When we chose this house, we already knew that there’s going to be there – it has its plus side as it’s really easy to get to places.
“I think it’s a good thing we have trees behind it and is that it’s actually down.”
Kent County Council said they had no involvement and it was National Highways’ responsibility.
The Sun Online has also approached National Highways, which looks after motorways and major A roads, for comment.
The differing opinions come after homeowners beside what’s been dubbed Britain’s busiest road insisted Greater Manchester‘s M62 was making their lives a misery.
That same M62 features houses including Quirky Stott Hall Farm, an 18th century farmhouse between two motorway lanes near Huddersfield in West Yorkshire.
There have also been complaints about living close to motorways by people in Rowley Regis in the West Midlands.
Traffic nearby zooms along the M5 into and out of England‘s second city Birmingham.
Concerns have also been raised by a dad living beneath the M4 in Port Talbot, Wales – although his wife disagrees.
And another family local to the same stretch say they find the sound soothing.