A parish council is refusing to accept changes to rail timetables that have left a village with a poorer service.

Nineteen months after Southeastern introduced a new schedule without consulting stakeholders, Bearsted Parish Council is still battling to have the changes reversed or revised.

Having failed to persuade Southeastern directly, the parish has resolved to write to Transport Focus, an independent transport watchdog, to ask it to put pressure on the rail company, which since October 2021 has been run by the government.

The row arises from timetable changes made in December 2022, when a new Charing Cross train was introduced starting at Maidstone East, a move which was welcomed by many county town residents.

But the new service led to a reduced Victoria service for stations east of Maidstone and Bearsted in particular, which had enjoyed two off-peak trains an hour running to Victoria from Ashford and one semi-fast from Canterbury West, all stopping at Bearsted.

But now there are fewer trains, the journey time to Victoria has lengthened by 14 minutes and the trains no longer make connections to other services, such as to Hastings or Canterbury.

Bearsted has been pushing Southeastern for the rationale behind the changes and demanding to know why there was no public consultation.

But the company responded last week to say that it had been instructed by the Department of Transport not to consult on the changes - it said there was a need following Covid to make urgent reviews to timetables and “the Department for Transport gave us a derogation to proceed without a formal consultation programme given the need to deliver changes quickly.

“It would have been disingenuous of us to seek consultation without time to change the timetable based on feedback.

“Equally, doing nothing and maintaining the existing timetable would have had several disbenefits, which would have only got worse as customers returned to the railway network following the pandemic.”

It later transpired that the new Charing Cross service was a substitute for the Thamseslink service that Maidstone had been promised.

This had not been made clear at the time and was only confirmed as a result of earlier FOI requests made by Bearsted Parish Council.

When challenged by Bearsted on that, Southeastern said: “The proposed Thameslink services for the Maidstone East line were originally part of the TSGN franchise between GTR and the DfT.

This looks like a cover up

“Southeastern had no input into the creation or subsequent cessation of the Thameslink proposals.”

Cllr David Hall, Bearsted Parish Council chairman, said: “We understand that consultation is not always necessary for minor alterations, but the service was completely re-written in December 2022 with all travellers being affected.

“Consultation on such far-reaching changes in a public service is essential.

“Bearsted now has a significantly worse off-peak train service than prior to the changes.

“On this and together with the abandonment of Thameslink, the rail industry should have engaged with affected communities.

“The lack of consultation looks very much like a corporate cover-up with no transparency and an attempt to bury major changes post-pandemic.“

Southeastern said the new timetable had enabled it to deliver a more certain service with a reduced number of cancellations and better punctuality.

A spokesman added: “We also recently extended two evening peak services that previously terminated at Maidstone East through to Ashford International to provide a direct service between Charing Cross and Bearsted, Hollingbourne, Harrietsham, Lenham and Charing.

“We’re also extending two more evening services from December.

“The 21.29 and 22.29 Charing Cross to Maidstone East services will be extended to Ashford International, calling at Bearsted, Hollingbourne, Harrietsham, Lenham and Charing.”