A campaign group for Maidstone rail commuters has been launched.

Following on from the successful establishment of the West Malling Rail Travellers’ Association earlier this month, a new rail-users group has been set up to represent the interests of passengers from Maidstone, Bearsted and surrounding villages.

The inaugural meeting was held at Maidstone Community Support Centre where a nine-strong committee was appointed.

The chairman is Laura Cloke, pictured. She said: "The aim is to improve the rail services from Maidstone and the other stations within the borough. With an active rail user group we can find out what Southeastern plan to do with our services well ahead of time and also work with Passenger Focus to improve our services.

"The Keep Our Trains group was formed earlier to campaign against planned cuts to services from Maidstone East station to London Cannon Street.

"Out of this campaign, it became apparent that Maidstone currently has no representative to voice commuters’ concerns surrounding other rail traveller issues.

"The Maidstone Area Rail Users Group will be a point of contact for commuters to raise any concerns they have about travelling on the railways, from timetable changes to car parking and ticket facilities.

"We in the Maidstone group will be working closely with the newly formed Malling District Rail Travellers’ Association on issues that affect the whole line, such as the planned cuts in December this year."

Among those in the audience at the inaugural meeting were Edward Winstanley representing Ann Widdecombe MP, Matthew Nash representing the Keep Our Trains campaign and Cllr Malcolm Robertson, Maidstone council’s rail champion.

Miss Cloke said: "The first priority for the group is to show our support to the Keep Our Train campaign, but longer term we hope to allow commuters to have a way to address all their concerns about rail travel from Maidstone and the surrounding stations."

Further details from laura.cloke@keepourtrains.com