Ebbsfleet has had no international train since 2020. Medway Council backs the campaign to change that, and the petition stood at 84,298 names on 16 September.

Medway Council is asking residents to put their names to a campaign for the return of international trains to Ebbsfleet and Ashford, the two Kent stations that have had no cross-Channel service since 2020.

The council published the appeal on Tuesday 15 September (Medway Council). It points at two things a resident can do today: a Change.org petition and a three-minute survey run by the campaign group Bring Back Euro Trains.

Where the campaign stands today

We checked the petition on the morning of 16 September 2026. It carried 84,298 signatures (Change.org). The council’s release says more than 84,000 people have signed and more than 16,000 have completed the survey.

One detail is worth flagging, because it changes what “nearly there” means. The council’s release describes the petition “as it works towards its target of 100,000 signatures”. The petition page itself now shows a target of 150,000. Change.org routinely raises a petition’s goal as it fills, so the figure on the page is the live one.

The survey is not a petition. It asks where you would start a cross-Channel journey, where you would go and how often you would travel, and the campaign says the answers are anonymised and used to build a commercial case (Bring Back Euro Trains). Its departure station list offers Ashford International, Ebbsfleet International, Stratford International and London St Pancras International. Each entry covers one route, so the group asks people to return and add another if they would use more than one.

Why this is a Medway story, not just a Kent one

Medway has no international station and never has. What it has is a direct connection to one.

All five Medway stations sit on the high speed line, and the Javelin services from Strood, Rochester, Chatham, Gillingham and Rainham run up High Speed 1 by way of Ebbsfleet International, the same line and the same station that Eurostar used (Southeastern). Our Medway trains to London page has the journey times: the fastest run is 33 minutes from Strood and 49 from Rainham to St Pancras.

That is the practical stake. With no service at Ebbsfleet, a Medway household travelling to Paris or Brussels by train has to go into central London first and come back out through the same tunnel mouth they started next to. The council’s release puts it as “a longer, more expensive trip into London for Medway residents to connect to international services”.

Cllr Vince Maple, Leader of Medway Council, said: “The benefits of international rail services returning are clear, boosts for tourism and businesses, making it easier to go on holiday, being able to visit friends or family with less hassle.”

What is actually being asked for

The council’s case is that operators need evidence before they commit. Its release says that “before committing to new services, operators need clear evidence that residents in Kent and Medway will use them”, and that is what both the petition and the survey are for.

Neither is a formal consultation. There is no decision date, no deadline and no authority obliged to respond. A petition on Change.org creates no legal duty on anyone, and the survey is run by a campaign group rather than by a rail operator or the Department for Transport. What they can do is produce a number that a commercial case can quote, which is what the council is asking Medway to add to.

What it means for you

  • Signing takes a minute; the survey takes about three. Both are linked from the council’s own page, and the survey asks for a route rather than a signature, so the two are not duplicates.
  • Nothing here changes a timetable. No international train is booked to call at Ebbsfleet or Ashford, and no operator has committed to one.
  • If you already travel to Europe by train from St Pancras, the survey’s Ebbsfleet option is the one that registers Medway demand, because Ebbsfleet is the station our Javelins already run through.
  • Watch what happens at Ebbsfleet, not what is said about it. A returning service would appear in an operator’s timetable and in Southeastern’s connection information long before it appeared in a press release.

Sources