by Although it’s 9am on a Friday morning, Ashford International Station is eerily quiet. The escalators are off, the toilets are closed. The bureau de change looks permanently closed and there are hundreds of spaces in the car park. You might 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 there are a lot of people in Kent who are not 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 big investment draws for Kent and we had businesses set up here for that reason. We carved up much of the Kent countryside for HS1. We have hotels built in this part of town based on that connectivity. We feel that we are very quick, because the arrangement has been closed.”
The first Eurostar the 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 continental Europe a day. But with the completion of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link from St Pancras in 2007 (and subsequent closure of services from Waterloo) services to Ashford and Ebbsfleet were halved, or dropped altogether.
Even a £10 million project to update the platforms and signaling systems at Ashford in 2018 could not attract new trains and in 2020, due to the pandemic, all international services from Ashford and Ebbsfleet were suspended . In May, Eurostar announced it was investing in a fleet of 50 new trains, but there is no sign they will be stopping in Kent anytime soon.
A spokesman for Eurostar said: “Our Kent stations will remain closed for 2024/2025. We will provide an update if this changes. We understand that 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 start of the Olympic Games in Paris has provided Kent hoteliers with a bitter reminder of the guests they could welcome if the Eurostar was still stopping on their doorstep. “We had a significant European market when the Eurostar services were running,” says James McComas, general manager of Eastwell Manor, a luxury spa hotel in Ashford.
“The French contingent is certainly much lower now. People are flying to London and renting cars and making their way out to us, but it’s a lot harder than turning across for a weekend. This part of Kent has some great things to offer tourists – sandy beaches in Broadstairs and Folkestone, stately homes and castles, the White Cliffs of Dover and wildlife parks.
“Eurostar has understandably stopped 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 have affected passenger numbers, Tudor Price insists demand for Eurostar services remains high in Kent. “We have a lot of high net worth people here who have been using Eurostar regularly for work and holiday,” he says. “I was in a cafe in Tunbridge Wells the other day and I overheard a conversation from people saying it was ridiculous that they had to drive all the way to London to go to Paris. We could fill at least one carriage without any problem.”
Tim Mitford-Slade, 48, works for BNP Paribas and bought a house in Ashford in 2001 based on his good connections 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 to 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 heading back straight past my house.
“I’m sure there are many people like me who would pay a premium for their tickets if Eurostar resumed services from Kent. It is a missed opportunity for everyone that Kent stations are idle.”
Price helped set up a campaign group with Kent County Council and Visit Kent to bring Eurostar services back to Kent. There are now over 57,000 signatures on a petition that was started in March 2023. Price says the next step is to talk to the government about regulating and encouraging online competition. “If we can’t bring Eurostar to the table willingly, we will try to force their hand.”
A number of players are looking to break Eurostar’s monopoly on the line, which would reduce fares and allow services to be restored in Kent. Dutch start-up Heuro, 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 like Heuro are the future of passenger rail,” says Dr Erich Forster of the Passenger Rail New Entrants Alliance. “We look forward to an alternative to the current situation where – with only one operator – the market is chronically underserved.”
Tudor Price says reopening Kent stations to Eurostar would ease the burden on St Pancras. “Everyone I’ve spoken to who has traveled on Eurostar from St Pancras says the infrastructure is terrible, there’s nowhere to sit and the queues are bad,” he says. “Later this year, all UK passport holders will have to go through biometric checks when traveling in Europe, making matters even more dire. And yet we have these huge empty stations here in Ashford and Ebbsfleet that would help alleviate that.”
“While we still have Channel ports and Le Shuttle services from Folkestone, the loss of Kent’s international services continues to be felt economically, locally and across the south east region,” says Nick Fenton, CEO of Locate in Kent, an organization which operates drive business investment into the county. “One of our main strengths as a business location disappeared overnight. It is not acceptable for London alone to enjoy 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 highly skilled, well paid jobs, we need those train services at Ebbsfleet and Ashford back.”
Richard Stafford, a charter surveyor based in Kent since 1985, says it’s time for a Eurostar rival. He says he used to take his wife to Europe every year on holiday, but refuses to travel all the way to London to catch the same train as he used to in Ashford. “Stuff on the Continent until Eurostar get their act together,” he says. “We’ll go to Edinburgh instead.”
Stafford says he has “dozens of examples” of the negative impact the loss of the Eurostar has had on Kent’s property market. “Back in 2020 we let some office space in the center of Ashford to a large American company that rents out cameras for film sets,” he says.
“They chose Ashford as their UK base because it was close to London and Europe. But when the Eurostar stopped running through Ashford, his big boss in the US said ‘You guys need to move to London’. They have now left, jobs were lost and the office manager was very upset – he had a lovely life in Kent.”
Although its international train links have faded, Dublin is experiencing an extensive, ongoing regeneration. The station has been designed with a shiny shopping center and companies such as the Curious Brewery and Brompton Bikes have chosen the area for their headquarters.
A multi-million pound film studio is set to open in Ashford in 2025. The Garden City campaign, launched in 2015, saw a boom in new homes and community projects 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 would be paying our share. Eurostar is all about generating shareholder wealth rather than working with the public. We want this part of the UK to be forward thinking and that includes high growth and international travel,” says Price. “If Eurostar doesn’t play nice, neither will we.”
