Despite being 9am on a Friday morning, Ashford International Station is very quiet. The escalators are closed, the toilets are closed. The currency exchange office appears to be permanently closed and there are hundreds of spaces in the car park. You can get a croque monsieur for £4.50 in the empty station café, but that’s as close as you’ll get to Paris. The Eurostar hasn’t stopped here since 2020 and many people in Kent are unhappy about that.
“It’s frustrating, to say the least,” says Tudor Price, chief executive of Kent Invicta Chamber of Commerce. “Eurostar was one of the biggest investment draws for Kent and that’s why we set up businesses here. We split up huge areas of Kent countryside for HS1. We built hotels in this part of the city based on that link. We’re very disappointed, it’s as if the arrangement has been broken down.”
First Euro star The service was discontinued 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 to Ashford and Ebbsfleet were halved or dropped altogether.
Even a £10m project to update platforms and signalling systems at Ashford in 2018 failed to attract new trains, and all international services from Ashford and Ebbsfleet were halted due to the pandemic in 2020. In May, Eurostar announced investment in a fleet of 50 new trains, but there is no sign of these stopping in Kent in the near future.
A Eurostar spokesman said: “Our Kent stations will remain closed throughout 2024/2025. We will provide an update if there are any changes to this. We understand 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 Olympics, which have started in Paris, have been a grim reminder for Kent hoteliers of the guests they could have accommodated if the Eurostar had still been on their doorstep. “We had a significant European market when the Eurostar service was running,” says James McComas, general manager of Eastwell Manor, a luxury spa hotel in Ashford.
“The French quota is certainly much lower now. People fly into London, hire a car and come down to us, but it’s much harder than just popping in for a weekend. This part of Kent has wonderful things to offer tourists – sandy beaches at Broadstairs and Folkestone, stately homes and castles, the White Cliffs of Dover and wildlife parks.
“It’s understandable that Eurostar has paused during the pandemic, but passenger numbers have bounced back and not all of our guests from Europe want to stay in London.”
Despite Brexit and Covid having affected passenger numbers, Tudor Price insists demand for Eurostar services in Kent remains high. “There are a lot of high-net-worth individuals here who use Eurostar regularly for work and leisure,” he says. “I was in a cafe in Tunbridge Wells the other day and overheard a conversation where people were saying it was ridiculous that they had to drive all the way to London to get to Paris. At least we could fill one carriage without any problems.”
Tim Mitford-Slade, 48, works for BNP Paribas and bought a house in Ashford in 2001 because of its good connections to Europe. “I used to use the Eurostar to get to and from 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 rush-hour train to London, check in for an hour there and sail back two hours later, past my house.
“I’m sure there are many people like me who will pay a premium for their tickets if Eurostar restarts its services from Kent. It’s a missed opportunity for everyone if Kent stations remain idle.”
Price has helped set up a campaign group to bring Eurostar services back to Kent, alongside Kent County Council and Visit 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 regulation and even encouraging competition. “If we can’t bring Eurostar to the table willingly, then we’ll try to force them to do it.”
There are several players aiming to break Eurostar’s monopoly on the line, which would reduce fares and open up the possibility of a resumption of services in Kent. Dutch start-up Heuro, Spanish firm Evelyn and Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin are 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 Alliance of Passenger Rail New Entrants. “We are looking for an alternative to the current situation, where the market is chronically underserved.”
Tudor Price says reopening Kent stations to Eurostar will ease the burden on St Pancras. “Everyone I speak to who travels on Eurostar from St Pancras says the infrastructure is terrible, there’s nowhere to sit and the queues are really bad,” he says. “Later this year, everyone with a UK passport will have to go through biometric checks when travelling in Europe and that will make things even worse. And yet we have huge empty stations in Ashford and Ebbsfleet which will help ease that burden.”
“While we still have the Channel ports and the Le Shuttle service from Folkestone, the loss of Kent’s international services continues to be felt economically both locally and across the south-east,” says Nick Fenton, chief executive of Locate in Kent, an organisation that works to attract business investment to the county. “One of our key strengths as a business location has disappeared overnight. It is unacceptable that London alone reaps all the rewards and prestige of the UK’s only cross-Channel link to Europe. The train services at Ebbsfleet and Ashford need to return if Kent and the wider south-east are to compete and continue to attract more highly skilled, well-paid jobs.”
Richard Stafford, a certified land surveyor who has lived in Kent since 1985, says it is time for Eurostar to have a rival. He takes his wife on holiday to Europe every year but refuses to travel all the way to London to catch the train he gets in Ashford. “Cramp up the Continent until Eurostar gets its act together,” he says. “We’ll go to Edinburgh instead.”
Mr Stafford says he has “countless examples” of how losing the Eurostar has negatively impacted Kent’s property market. “In 2020 we leased an 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 running through Ashford, their big boss in the US said, ‘You guys need to move to London.’ Now they’ve left, jobs have been lost and the office manager is really upset – he had a good life in Kent.”
Although international train links have suffered, Ashford has seen extensive, ongoing regeneration. There’s a bright designer department store next to the station, and companies such as Curious Brewery and Brompton Bikes have chosen it as their headquarters.
A multi-million pound film studio is set to open in Ashford in 2025. New homes and community projects have emerged in Ebbsfleet since the Garden City campaign launched in 2015.
“It doesn’t make sense for Eurostar to have trains that run through Kent but don’t stop here. Yes, there are additional costs and security measures, but we will pay our share. Eurostar is stubborn about creating shareholder wealth rather than working with the community. We want this part of the UK to be forward-looking and high-growth, and international travel is part of that,” says Price. “If Eurostar doesn’t behave well, neither will we.”