Dear Supporters

Firstly thank you your valued financial support.  I will send out a financial overview shortly, but here is a summary of our campaign as we enter 2026.  As we move into a new year we are more confident than ever before that international trains will return to Kent. The only question now is, when. 

Our campaigning voice is being is being heard at the at heart government. This was most clearly demonstrated last September during the fantastic "Grow in Kent" event organised by Kent County Council. KCC hoped to demonstrate the huge breath of interest in the return for international rail to Kent: business leaders, community groups and politicians came together to hear Rail Minister Lord Peter Hendy state his unequivocal ambition to encourage competition on the international line, as well as his commitment to reopen the Kent stations. The Government has since set up a task force to work on the reopening of Ashford and Ebbsfleet International. 

Probably the most significant event of 2025 for cross-Channel rail was the announcement by the office of Rail & Road (ORR) of the allocation of spare capacity at the Temple Mills international train depot in East London. Virgin Rail emerged as the winner, heralding for the first time the promise of competition to Eurostar. Virgin Trains hope to operate services by 2031, but right now they face the practical challenge of formalising their working arrangements with Eurostar at the Temple Mills Depot before they can place their order for new trains. They have publicly committed to using Ashford and Ebbsfleet stations provided these are opened for them. 

The operators who were not allocated space at Temple Mills have all stated that they are not giving up. Most importantly, Trenitalia used the closing days of 2025 to announce that they have secured financing to launch London to Paris Rail services without the need for a depot on UK soil. Trenitalia plan to invest £87 million in purpose-built facilities near Paris and intend to order 10 Frecciarossa 1000 ("Red Arrow") trains destined to run between Paris and London by 2029, well ahead of Virgin. 

For Kent, Trenitalia’s announcement is potentially very exciting, as the company was the most positive for Ashford out of all Eurostar’s potential rivals. At the time, it publicly committed to reinstating international services from Ashford and put forward ambitious plans to establish an innovation hub in Ashford. We will be pushing Trenitalia on their commitment to Kent in the light of their latest announcements. 

Crucial to enabling any other new operator will be an expansion of the UK's international train maintenance depot facilities. We are therefore pleased to report that while attention was focused on the allocation of spare capacity at Temple Mills, the Government also launched a consultation to gauge interest from private investors in the construction of an entirely new international train maintenance depot, to be potentially operational by 2030. 

On 8th January 2026, Ashford borough Council will celebrate the 30th anniversary of the opening of Ashford International with an event entitled “Bring Back the Magic”, where we are invited to speak. 

We are unflagging in our efforts on your behalf. We continue to lobby prospective new cross-Channel operators as well as local and national Government representatives. We keep ourselves in the public eye with regular press releases, our Tiktok output attracts thousand of views and the petition continues to grow. We maintain our website as a news and information hub. 

Thank you once again for your support.
Alex Bienfait.
Acting Chair Bring Back Euro Trains.