Ever since Christmas the service on Southeastern trains has got worse and worse. The flow of complaints has accelerated, reflecting a substantial deceleration in the train services and their reliability.
I spoke in a House of Commons debate about Southeastern, and called on the Government, Network Rail and Southeastern to take action.
It’s unacceptable for this level of service to continue. Passengers are being affected often daily by late trains and cancellations. Myself and other Kent MPs are piling pressure on Southeastern, Network Rail and the Government to do more to sort it out.
Along with solutions to the short-term problems, we need to start seeing some plans for better service beyond the next couple of years. We are seeing enormous population growth across Kent — my constituency is part of that — and there is infrastructure there that is often 50 or more than 100 years old. It is simply not fit for the level of use that it is getting
While I realise the redevelopment of London Bridge makes it harder to maintain a good service and recognise there’s not much Southeastern could have done about the sea wall collapsing at Dover, they and Network Rail must go further to overcome these problems. We can’t have two years of this kind of level of service. I’ll be keeping the pressure up until we get performance back to where it should be, and meanwhile, asking questions about what will be done to really improve the rail infrastructure for the longer term. If this is what it’s like now, what will it be like in 10 years time with population growth across the South East?
