Karen Harding, our Borough Green correspondent, reports:

Regular commuters from Borough Green & Wrotham will know that there are only a few (understatement) direct services from Ashford via Maidstone East, Borough Green and Otford to the City, leaving Borough Green at 06.30 and 07:10, and only one return service leaving at 17.45 from City Thameslink.  (As from 22 December, these services will be terminating at/returning from London Blackfriars.)

Despite their timetable for the Christmas period saying that it would be a normal weekday service for the week commencing 5 January until the new timetable change on 11 January, Southeastern have removed all the Ashford-Bedford services from the timetable – and have not told passengers they have done so.

These few trains are vital. This is a limited service, so it is all the more important that people who depend on them know what is happening. Yet there have been no posters at the station and nothing on the indicator boards or the website.  The first I knew of it was talking to another passenger one morning who gets on at Swanley!  I later spoke to Southeastern Customer Services Department at Tonbridge, and they couldn’t tell me anything either, other than to apologise.

Taking into account that the week commencing 5 January will be the first week back after Christmas for the majority of people, and on the back of the usual fare rises, this is a pretty spectacularly shoddy own goal for Southeastern.

During the BBC’s Big Rail Debate on 13 October Southeastern’s new Managing Director David Statham emphasised that there would be proper communication with passengers and information on services will passed on.  It’s a pity that despite the new management, and the assurances that ‘lessons have been learned’ it seems to be the ‘same old, same old’ from our much (un)loved train operator.