Commuters facing longer journeys to work because of cuts to high speed services have unveiled plans to keep HS1 in their area.

More than 100 people came to the the Trains4Deal meeting which saw campaigners lay out proposals for fast weekday links to Deal and the Discovery Park in Sandwich.

Funding for the area’s HS1 service runs out in March next year, with no word on what will happen afterwards from Kent County Council, Southeastern or the Government.

Plans unveiled at the Bohemian in Deal on Thursday night aim to attract London workers to the area.

They suggest extending the St Pancras service arriving at Dover at 8.18am to Deal at 8.36am, Sandwich at 8.42am and Ramsgate at 8.54am.

Campaigners argue the cost would not be excessive and would be mitigated by the economic benefits to the area.

"A lot of people have got jobs in London and if these trains are stopped, they are completely stuffed..." - Trains4Deal founder Tom Rowland

Campaign founder Tom Rowland said: “We have worked out a system which uses the spare capacity on the line. It is perfectly viable.

“At the moment you cannot get up to Discovery Park from London in the morning and the owners say that is a major impediment to getting high-quality technology companies to lease space from them.

“A lot of people have got jobs in London and if these trains are stopped, they are completely stuffed. Workers have got houses they have bought and no way of getting to the jobs that service the morgages for them. It is an impossible position they have been put in.”

Campaigners say they plan to take Kent County Council to a judicial review if HS1 services are not kept in the area.

Yet they say the process of lobbying for them to be saved is difficult because decisions on timetables are not made in public.

Mr Rowland added: “It is a completely untransparent system. No one knows how it works so all you can do is push ministers, local politicians and train companies in the hope that something is going to happen.

“The basic problem is no one knows how this process works because it is not constitutional. It has never been done like this before.”