https://www.facebook.com/groups/746105824775303/posts/806755435377008/
During the early hours of Saturday, the 27th of January 2024, a major landslide took place on Folkestone's Road of Remembrance.
Several tall trees cascaded down the hillside in a sea of mud. All were tall, heavy Holm Oaks sitting mostly bolt upright or hanging down into the road. A second landslide occurred in almost the same spot a few weeks later, bringing down more mud and trees.
It was most fortunate that no one was injured or killed; if it had occurred later in the day, it might well have been a different story.
At about 7.30 am on the morning of the first landslide, it was my intention to walk my dog down the road to take him to Sunny Sands.
My route was partially blocked as the road was sealed off by a few traffic cones and a plastic fence. There weren't any workers or police anywhere to be seen. I was able to walk down the road quite a way and took some astonishing close-up photos of the trees lying across the road.
I posted them on some of the local community Facebook groups.
Later on, I was contacted by a Kent Online reporter asking for my permission to use my photos. I was also contacted by the BBC South East Today, who asked the same. So most of the photos you see are attributed to me.
I am including the photos I took in this post, as well as others I have taken off social media. The first 2 photos were taken in 2014 and are of volunteers, I believe, planting shrubs down the road where the new poetry verse was fixed to the wall. In the first photo, you can clearly see the Holm Oaks that were eventually to crash down the hillside 10 years later; even then, they looked precarious and in my opinion should have been taken down then by Folkestone & Hythe District Council, as there had been a landslide before there when one tree partially blocked the road in February 2014.
The 3rd photo just shows the poetry verse and how the shrubs were spreading; it's dated 2016.
The following 6 photos I obtained today by doing a Google Street View dated December 2022 of the Road of Remembrance. You can see how much the trees have grown in the 8 years after the shrubs were planted. These trees still had another 13 months of growth ahead of them after this Google Street View of them before they were washed down the hillside in a landslide.
The other photos of the fallen trees were the ones I took that Saturday morning.
In my view, the Council and, in particular, the CEO of Folkestone Council, as well as the Leader of the Council, as well as previous CEO's and Leaders, together with those employees in charge of Parks & Gardens, are highly fortunate that none of them are today facing trial on charges of death caused by corporate manslaughter and negligence.
If there had been a serious injury or a fatality caused by their negligence, then you can bet your life there would have been a thorough independent investigation carried out, as well as another by the Kent Police.
I still believe that these people should still be facing an inquiry, as their actions were responsible for this devastating landslide that may well have been preventable if the trees had been taken down when the previous landslide occurred there.
This 20-month-long road closure has caused significant and incalculable interruption to people's lives and businesses that rely on this road, as well as the traffic chaos it has caused in the vicinity.
By the time the road reopens, if it ever does, it will have cost the local council taxpayers as well as County Council taxpayers millions of pounds to repair. All this may well have been avoided or minimised in time and costs involved if our penny-pinching local authority had listened to their own tree surgeons, who told me they had been trying for several years to get the council to agree to close the road down long enough for them to pollard many of the trees that in their opnion were too tall and too heavy and sat perilously hanging over the road waiting for the day when they would fall down the hillside. Instead, the tree surgeons told me that the council would not agree to close the road or take the trees down.
Folkestone & Hythe District Council's folly has cost us all dearly, and only by the grace of God has it not resulted in some poor person's injury or death.
This is why we cannot trust them to manage the trees and cliff top along the Leas, as their track record so far of maintaining the Leas has been abysmal.