Drivers are set to face major travel chaos as the Dartford Crossing is set to shut regularly during June.
The crossing, which is used by around 150,000 vehicles a day, will be closed so repairs can be carried out to the structure and road.
Instead, drivers will be sent on a seven-mile diversion through a nearby village whilst the repairs to the crossing are underway.
The Dartford Crossing, which connects the counties of Kent and Essex, is made up of a road bridge and tunnel. Furthermore, it also acts as an access road to the M25.
Announcing the repairs and maintenance, National Highways warned there would be “regular week-night closures” between Monday, June 3 and Monday, July 1.
On the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, they said it is scheduled to be closed between June 22 and June 23.
Last month, National Highways explained what they would be doing on the tunnel. They said: “We’ll be carrying out repairs to some key electrical components in the east tunnel, as well as planned maintenance to a bridge at A282 junction 1b throughout June.
“To work in both areas safely, the A282 northbound carriageway (between M25 junction 2 and A282 junction 1a) and the Dartford east tunnel are scheduled to close overnight on weeknights between Monday 3 June and Friday 21 June.”
The latest maintenance on the bridge and tunnels comes 61 years after the original tunnels were opened in 1963 with one lane of traffic flowing in each direction.
Fast forward to 1991 by then a second tunnel had been constructed and a new bridge – named after Queen Elizabeth II – was constructed over the River Thames.
At the time the Dartford Crossing bridge reportedly had the longest cable-stayed span of any bridge of its kind in Europe and became one of the few river crossings downstream of central London.
Today it is one of the busiest bridges in Europe with some of the busiest days seeing 180,000 vehicles use it and almost 40 percent of those are HGVs.