by political editor Paul Francis

Every major town in Kent must have regular peak period trains to West End and City stations under the next rail franchise, say county transport chiefs.

The call comes in a masterplan drawn up by KCC that calls for a raft of improvements it says would deliver a better deal for Kent’s rail passengers.

County councillors endorsed Kent County Council’s Rail Action Plan this week.

It describes the franchise, due for renewal in 2014, as a pivotal moment in Kent’s rail services and recommends wide-ranging improvements.

It follows persistent criticisms of the current operator Southeastern and suspicions that many "classic" services have been downgraded since the introduction of high speed services.

Among the plan’s key priorities are better services to and from the County Town of Maidstone and London.

There are also calls for a doubling of the number of high speed trains between Ashford, Ebbsfleet, Stratford and St Pancras to meet rising commuter demand.

And high speed services to east Kent must also be included as part of the new franchise.

The action plan labels services from the Maidstone East Line "completely unacceptable" and says the new franchise must "address this omission above all else".

It says the new franchise must incorporate an hourly service all day to Blackfriars and that from 2018, the line should be the principal Kent route for the full Thameslink service south of the Thames.

And it calls for the recently-announced introduction of a high speed train from Maidstone West to run all day, with additional stops at Snodland and Maidstone Barracks.

On high speed trains, the plan recommends increasing off-peak services from a single train per hour to two per hour to Canterbury West, Folkestone West, Folkestone Central and Dover Priory.

Cllr Bryan Swetland (Con) KCC’s cabinet member for transport, said: "Although we don’t control the railways, this is an important document as we are a major stakeholder and this is our attempt to pull together a specification for the new franchise in 2014.

"When high speed services were introduced in 2009, it had a detrimental effect on other services. We need High Speed to drag up the performance of the rest of the network and in certain instances, it has had the opposite effect."

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