Despite it being 9am on a Friday morning, Ashford International Station is noticeably quiet. The escalators are switched off, the toilets are closed. The bureau de change looks permanently closed, and the car park has hundreds of spaces. You might be able to get a £4.50 croque monsieur in the empty station café, but that’s the closest you’ll get to Paris. The Eurostar stopped stopping here in 2020, and many people in Kent aren’t happy about that.
“It’s frustrating to say the least,” said Tudor Price, CEO of Kent Invicta Chamber of Commerce. “The Eurostar was one of the biggest drivers of investment into Kent and that’s why we set up businesses here. We carved up huge chunks of the Kent countryside for HS1. We built hotels in this part of the city on the back of that connectivity. We feel very disappointed, like the deal has been broken.”
The first Eurostar The service ceased at Ashford International in January 1996 – a year after cross-Channel rail services began at Waterloo – and at one point there were around a dozen services a day to mainland Europe. However, the completion of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link from St Pancras in 2007 (and the subsequent closure of services from Waterloo) meant that services from Ashford and Ebbsfleet were halved or withdrawn altogether.
Even a £10m project to upgrade platforms and signalling at Ashford in 2018 failed to attract new trains, and in 2020 all international services from Ashford and Ebbsfleet were suspended due to the pandemic. In May, Eurostar announced it was investing in a fleet of 50 new trains, but there is no sign that they will stop in Kent any time soon.
A Eurostar spokesperson said: “Our stations in Kent will remain closed in 2024/2025. We will provide an update if anything changes on this matter. We understand that this is disappointing for local communities and we will continue to work closely and openly with local councils on the future of the stations.”
The Olympic Games starting in Paris are a bitter reminder to Kent hoteliers of the guests they could have welcomed if the Eurostar were still on their doorstep. “We had a significant European market when the Eurostar services were still running,” says James McComas, managing director of Eastwell Manor, a luxury spa hotel in Ashford.
“Now the French contingent is certainly much lower. People fly to London, hire cars and travel to us, but it’s much harder than just a weekend away. This part of Kent has some great things to offer tourists – sandy beaches at Broadstairs and Folkestone, stately homes and castles, the White Cliffs of Dover and wildlife parks.
“It is understandable that Eurostar was temporarily closed during the pandemic, but passenger numbers are back and not all of our European guests want to stay in London.”
While Brexit and Covid have had an impact on passenger numbers, Tudor Price insists that demand for Eurostar services in Kent remains high. “We have a lot of wealthy people here who regularly use Eurostar for work and holidays,” he says. “I was sitting in a cafe in Tunbridge Wells the other day and overheard a conversation of people saying it was ridiculous that they had to drive all the way to London to get to Paris. We could easily fill at least one carriage.”
Tim Mitford-Slade, 48, who works for BNP Paribas, bought a house in Ashford in 2001 because of its easy access to Europe. “I used to use the Eurostar four or five times a year to travel to Paris and Brussels,” he says. “It was seamless and easy. But now I have to pay £90 for a peak-hour train to London for work, check in for an hour there and then sail past my house two hours later.
“I’m sure there are plenty of people like me who would pay a premium for their tickets if Eurostar were to resume services from Kent. It’s a missed opportunity for everyone that Kent stations are idle.”
Price has helped set up a campaign group with Kent County Council and Visit Kent to bring Eurostar services back to Kent. A petition launched in March 2023 now has more than 57,000 signatures. Price says the next step is to talk to the government about regulating and encouraging competition on the route. “If we can’t get Eurostar to the table voluntarily, then we will try to force them.”
There are several players looking to break Eurostar’s monopoly on the route, which would lower fares and open up the possibility of resuming services in Kent. Dutch start-up Heuro, Spanish company Evelyn and Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin are all in talks to launch a competing service from the UK to Brussels, Paris and Amsterdam. “Start-ups like Heuro are the future of passenger rail,” said Dr Erich Forster of the Alliance of Passenger Rail New Entrants. “We are looking forward to providing an alternative to the current situation where – with just one operator – the market is chronically under-served.”
Tudor Price says reopening Kent stations to Eurostar would ease the burden on St Pancras. “Everyone I’ve spoken to who’s travelled on Eurostar from St Pancras says the infrastructure is terrible, there’s nowhere to sit and the queues are absolutely horrendous,” he says. “Later this year, anyone with a British passport will have to go through biometric checks when travelling in Europe, which will make matters worse. And yet here in Ashford and Ebbsfleet we have these huge empty stations which would help alleviate that.”
“While we still have the Channel Ports and Le Shuttle services from Folkestone, the economic impact of losing Kent’s international services continues to be felt both locally and across the South East region,” said Nick Fenton, CEO of Locate in Kent, an organisation that works to encourage business investment in the region. “One of our key strengths as a business location has disappeared overnight. It is not acceptable for London to reap all the rewards and prestige of the UK’s only canal link to Europe. For Kent and the wider South East region to compete and continue to attract more highly skilled, well-paid jobs, we need those rail services in Ebbsfleet and Ashford.”
Richard Stafford, a chartered surveyor who has lived in Kent since 1985, says it is high time the Eurostar got a rival. He says he used to take his wife on holiday to Europe every year, but he refuses to travel all the way to London to catch the same train as in Ashford. “Break the continent until the Eurostar gets sorted out,” he says. “We go to Edinburgh instead.”
Stafford says he has “countless examples” of how the loss of the Eurostar has negatively affected Kent’s property market. “In 2020, we let some office space in the middle 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 going through Ashford, their big boss in the US said, ‘You’ve got to move to London’. They’ve now left, jobs have been lost and the office manager was very angry – he had a wonderful life in Kent.”
While international rail links have withered, Ashford has undergone extensive, ongoing regeneration. There is a gleaming designer store by the station and businesses such as the Curious Brewery and Brompton Bikes have chosen the area for their headquarters.
A multi-million pound film studio will open in Ashford in 2025. The Garden City campaign, launched in 2015, has delivered new homes and community projects in Ebbsfleet.
“It makes no sense for Eurostar to run trains through Kent but not stop here. Yes, there are extra costs and safety measures, but we pay our fair share. Eurostar is stubborn about generating shareholder wealth rather than working with the community. We want this part of the UK to be progressive and high growth and international travel is part of that,” Price said. “If Eurostar doesn’t play nice, then neither will we.”