This week has seen the re-opening of the Dover to Folkestone railway line, after its closure following storm damage at the end of last year. The closure of the line has been a major inconvenience for all rail passengers in East Kent over the last nine months, and I would like thank them for their forbearance. I would also like to thank all of the railway staff who have done their best to help passengers on their way, in often challenging circumstances.
The re-opening of the line follows a £40million investment from Network Rail. They have not only had to reconstruct the track itself, but to rebuild all of the sea defences that protect it. This has required the complete replacement of the old Victorian infrastructure that had supported the old line, and has been a major engineering project. My congratulations go to Network Rail for successfully completing their work, and doing so ahead of schedule; it had originally been feared that the line would have remained closed for the rest of this year. The new track and sea defences should last for a least the next 100 years, and whilst this work has been completed with considerable disruption to services, it is something that would almost certainly have needed to have been done at some point.
Rail services are an increasingly important part of both the day to day life, and the ongoing regeneration of the coastal towns in East Kent. There is no doubt that since the opening of the High Speed Rail services, considerable inward investment has come to towns like Folkestone and Hythe. The demand for rail services into and out of London is growing, and we need to plan now for the likely future demand in services. The operating franchise for Southeastern railway will come up for renewal in 2018, and this creates a further opportunity to consider the services that we will need going into the 2020s. It is clear that we need the capacity to offer more services and longer trains, and this will require more rolling stock than is currently available. We should also consider station capacity as well. The proposal that Shepway Council has put to the government, to create a garden town community at Otterpool, close to junction 11 of the M20, could allow for the redevelopment of Westenhanger Station into a modern parkway station, with proper facilities for car parking. It should also be possible to create a new access road so that passengers can access the station directly from the motorway junction, rather than through Westenhanger station. Such a facility would not only be of great benefit to the communities it serves directly, but would also relieve pressure at other stations along the line.
The planned developments in Shepway over the coming decades, have the ability to bring big investment into our district, creating the new homes and jobs that people need. Alongside this, we also need to create the infrastructure we will need to make the most of this opportunity.