On Friday morning, the old Eurostar departure lounge at Ashford International station came alive for the first time in years. Students from North Kent College took to the stage with an interpretative dance to a bewildering song about the return of rail services, Kent County Council leader Linden Kemkaran cut a ceremonial ribbon, and Rail Minister Lord Peter Hendy told the room “the government hears you.”
For a short while, Ashford looked like an international station again. Then the invited guests were ushered onto a Southeastern train, taken 20 minutes up the line on High Speed 1, and deposited at Ebbsfleet for more speeches, another ribbon cutting, and the signing of a memorandum of understanding. By midday, it was all over, with the platforms standing empty again, and the promise of cross-Channel services through Kent remaining just that: a promise.
A county on hold
Kent County Council organised the event, and its leader, Linden Kemkaran, made the case in direct terms: “It’s really important for the residents, so they don’t have to go all the way up to London and spend £40 on a ticket up to London before they’ve got the cost of the Eurostar. It’s really important for business because having the Eurostar stop here gives a boost to all local businesses. And it’s really important for tourism because Kent should not be a place that you just speed through. We’ve got so much to offer. We’ve got fabulous country pubs, we’ve got everything here. So it’s such a shame that the train is just whizzing through at the moment.”
She was equally clear about the bigger picture. “If Eurostar won’t play ball, there’s gaps in the market for somebody else to. That’s the beauty of capitalism, isn’t it?” Eurostar, in her view, had lost the right to local loyalty. She also pointed out that the job of councils does not end with a single event. “We can keep the pressure on government. We can follow up this event with a letter, with hopefully a meeting with Lord Hendy. We can keep the pressure on. But hopefully, with the competition being introduced when the franchise is up for bidding. I’ve just been talking to some of the competitors. They are keen as mustard. They want this. They can see the opportunity.”
Ashford International and Ebbsfleet International were designed as gateways. Ashford was rebuilt at a cost of £80m to allow Eurostar trains to stop there from 1996. Ebbsfleet was purpose-built a decade later, opening in 2007 with a 9,000-space car park and the expectation of millions of passengers. Together, they were supposed to make Kent’s proximity to Europe pay off.
Instead, both are now ghost stations. Ashford has only domestic services and the Designer Outlet to draw visitors in. Ebbsfleet functions mainly as a park-and-ride into London. International trains stopped during the pandemic, and Eurostar has made clear it does not plan to return.
That absence is felt across the county. Canon Andrew Dodd of Canterbury Cathedral told us that visitor numbers have fallen since the trains stopped. “Part of that story is about the lack of connectivity to Canterbury city itself. Reinstituting the line here at Ashford would be a big boost to local business in Canterbury and improve visitor numbers for the cathedral,” he said. For him, the issue is also personal. “I personally have made the choice not to fly. It’s a difficult journey to make. I have to get to central London, just to come back through an Ashford station that would have only been a 20 minute trip for me.”
The battle lines
Eurostar says stopping in Kent is uneconomic. The Guardian reported last week that only 4% of passengers boarded at Ashford or Ebbsfleet in 2019, with as few as 50 people joining a peak-time service. The company argues that restarting would require significant investment in new border systems and staff that cannot be justified for those numbers.
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