Despite it being 9am on a Friday morning, Ashford International Station is remarkably quiet. The escalators are switched off, the toilets are closed. The bureau de change looks permanently shuttered and the car park has hundreds of spaces. You may be able to get a £4.50 croque monsieur at the empty station cafe, but that’s as close as you’ll get to Paris. The Eurostar hasn’t stopped here since 2020 and many people in Kent aren’t happy about it.
“It’s frustrating to say the least,” says Tudor Price, chief executive of Kent Invicta Chamber of Commerce. “The Eurostar was one of the major investment pulls for Kent and we had businesses set up here for that reason. We carved up huge swathes of the Kent countryside for HS1. We have hotels built in this part of town based on that connectivity. We feel very let down, like the arrangement has been reneged on.”
The first Eurostar service stopped at Ashford International in January 1996 – a year after cross-Channel rail services started in Waterloo – and at one point there were around a dozen services to mainland Europe a day. But the completion of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link from St Pancras in 2007 (and subsequent closure of services from Waterloo) meant Ashford and Ebbsfleet services were halved, or completely dropped.
Not even a £10 million project to update the platforms and signalling systems at Ashford in 2018 could attract new trains and in 2020, due to the pandemic, all international services from Ashford and Ebbsfleet were paused. In May, Eurostar announced it was investing in a fleet of 50 new trains, yet there is no sign of them stopping in Kent any time soon.
A spokesperson for Eurostar said: “Our Kent stations will remain closed throughout 2024/2025. We will provide an update should anything change regarding this. We understand this is disappointing for the local communities, and we will continue to work closely and openly with the local councils on the future of the stations.”
The Olympics starting in Paris has been a bitter reminder for Kent hotel owners of the guests they could have welcomed if the Eurostar was still stopping on their doorstep. “We used to have a significant European market when Eurostar services were running,” says James McComas, general manager of Eastwell Manor, a luxury spa hotel in Ashford.
“Now the French contingent is definitely much lower. People do fly to London and rent cars and make their way out to us, but it’s a lot harder than popping across for a weekend. This part of Kent has some amazing things to offer tourists – sandy beaches in Broadstairs and Folkestone, stately homes and castles, the White Cliffs of Dover and wild animal parks.
“It’s understandable that Eurostar paused during the pandemic, but passenger numbers are back and not all of our guests visiting from Europe want to stay in London.”
Although Brexit and Covid had an impact on passenger numbers, Tudor Price insists the demand for Eurostar services remains high in Kent. “We have a lot of high-net-worth individuals here who were regularly using Eurostar for work and holidays,” he says. “I was in a cafe in Tunbridge Wells the other day and overheard a conversation from people who were saying it was ridiculous that they had to drive all the way to London to get to Paris. We could fill up at least one carriage no problem.”
Tim Mitford-Slade, 48, works for BNP Paribas and bought a house in Ashford in 2001 based on its good links to Europe. “I was using the Eurostar to commute to Paris and Brussels four or five times a year,” he says. “It was seamless and easy. But now when I travel for work I have to pay £90 for a peak train to London, spend an hour there checking in, and then two hours later I’m sailing right back past my house.
“I’m sure there are plenty of people like me who would pay a premium on their tickets if Eurostar re-started services from Kent. It’s a missed opportunity for everyone having the Kent stations lying dormant.”
Price has helped set up a campaign group with Kent County Council and Visit Kent to bring Eurostar services back to Kent. A petition started in March 2023 now has over 57,000 signatures. Price says the next step is to talk to the government about regulation and encouraging competition on the line. “If we can’t bring Eurostar to the table willingly then we’ll try and force their hand.”
There are several players who are looking to break Eurostar’s monopoly on the line, which would bring down fares and open up the possibility of services resuming in Kent. The Dutch start-up Heuro, the Spanish company Evelyn and Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin are all in talks to launch a rival service from the UK to Brussels, Paris and Amsterdam. “Start-ups such as Heuro are the future of passenger rail,” says Dr Erich Forster from the Alliance of Passenger Rail New Entrants. “We look forward to an alternative to the current situation where – with only one operator – the market is chronically underserved.”
Tudor Price says that reopening Kent stations to Eurostar would relieve the burden on St Pancras. “Everyone I’ve spoken to who’s travelled on Eurostar from St Pancras says the infrastructure is appalling, there’s nowhere to sit and the queues are really bad,” he says. “Later this year, everyone with a UK passport will need to go through biometric checks when travelling in Europe, making things even more horrendous. And yet we have these enormous empty stations here in Ashford and Ebbsfleet which would help alleviate that.”
“While we still have the Channel ports and Le Shuttle services from Folkestone, the loss of Kent’s international services continues to be felt economically, both locally and across the southeast region,” says Nick Fenton, CEO of Locate in Kent, an organisation that works to drive business investment into the county. “One of our key strengths as a business location simply disappeared overnight. It’s not acceptable for London alone to be reaping all the rewards and prestige of the UK’s only cross-channel link with Europe. For Kent and the wider South East region to compete and continue to attract more high-skilled, well-paid jobs, we need those train services at Ebbsfleet and Ashford back.”
Richard Stafford, a chartered surveyor who has been based in Kent since 1985, says it’s about time the Eurostar had a rival. He says he used to take his wife to Europe every year on holiday, but he refuses to travel all the way to London to get the same train he used to get in Ashford. “Stuff the Continent until Eurostar get their act together,” he says. “We will go to Edinburgh instead.”
Stafford says he has “umpteen examples” of how losing the Eurostar has negatively affected Kent’s property market. “Back in 2020 we let some office space in the middle of Ashford to a big American company who hire out cameras for film sets,” he says.
“They chose Ashford as their UK base because it had proximity to both London and Europe. But when the Eurostar stopped running through Ashford, their big boss in the US said ‘You guys need to move to London’. They’ve left now, jobs were lost and the office manager was really upset – he had a beautiful life in Kent.”
While its international train links have languished, Ashford has seen extensive, ongoing regeneration. There is a shiny designer shopping outlet by the station and companies such as the Curious Brewery and Brompton Bikes have chosen the area for their HQs.
A multimillion pound film studio is set to open in Ashford in 2025. The Garden City campaign, launched in 2015, has seen new homes and community projects flourish in Ebbsfleet.
“It makes no sense that Eurostar has trains flying through Kent but not stopping here. Yes, there are additional costs and security measures, but we’d be paying our part. Eurostar is being bloody-minded about generating share-holder wealth as opposed to working with the community. We want this part of the UK to be forward-thinking and high-growth and international travel is a part of that,” says Price. “If Eurostar won’t play nicely, then neither will we.”
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