A leading councillor has defended Ashford High Street and said it is much better than a recent survey would suggest.

The comments come after Ashford ranked 463 out of 500 town centres in the UK in retail specialist Harper Dennis Hobbs’ (HDH) Vitality Index.

Cllr Graham Galpin, (Con), defended the town at a meeting last week, and said: "We made it into the top 500 town centres in the UK so we are actually doing very well for a medium sized town.

"This report excludes the Designer Outlet so if you include that area, it makes Ashford a different beast entirely.”

At the Ashford Borough Council (ABC) cabinet meeting members pointed out the rising figures on the council’s own high street footfall counter earlier this year, which in July and August clocked an average of 264,000 people.

But Cllr Winston Michael, (Ash Ind), said those figures could be misleading.

He said: “The footfall counter simply measures people passing by. If you go back and forth to the shops 10 times then you would be counted 10 times. So that is not the same as having 10 different visitors.

“I am a great supporter of the town centre, I use it quite a lot so I would not want to put it down, but we have to be realistic and understand the actual figures.

“The town centre manager quoted over five million visitors in 2014 – but that’s not visitors that’s movements of traffic.”

Cllr Neil Shorter (Con) also added that the measurement of footfall figures or ranking in the Vitality Index report is not as important as overall trends or other schemes.

He said: “The report has not taken into account the great many new initiatives being introduced to breathe new life into Ashford’s high street such as the new Farmers’ Market, PopUp Ashford, T-CAT, Love Ashford website and free parking offer.

“We know we have a wonderful opportunity to bring a new look and feel to the high street but this takes time.

“We believe the work that is being put in now will have a positive long term effect on our town centre.”