Webinar presentation: petition analysis, by Phillip Gay

Published: 2 April, 2024 | Tags:

Phillip Gay, BBET's IT specialist
Phillip Gay (video still)

Phillip is BBET’s IT specialist and in-house geek. Together with Bushra Akhtar, he has analysed the data generated by the petition and presents it here.

The analysis was based on 52,694 signatures gathered between the petition’s launch on 9th March 2023 and 19th March 2024.

This was the first presentation of the Petition Anniversay Webinar that took place on 20th March 2

We have analysed the signatories by location, and as you would expect the majority live in the south east of the UK. But not exclusively so:
South east UK: 59.18%
London: 19.27
Outside UK: 8.16%

This heat map of the south east indicates where there are concentrations of signatories. This showed an overwhelming number of concerned people centred on Ashford. Other centres were London, Canterbury, Rochester and Hastings:

Petition south east heat map

Outside the UK, the map of Europe shows concentrations of signatories in the Netherlands, Belgium and France, also the Czech Republic and Slovakia:

Petition signatories in Europe

“These numbers reassure us that there are people who have a passion for the return of the service, for many reasons.”

Phillip Gay

Around 2000 signatories left comments which we sorted into subject categories. They expressed concern about:

  • the impact on families;
  • people who moved to Kent specially for this service;
  • concern about the carbon emissions of alternative forms of transport;
  • the inconvenience and cost of travelling via St Pancras;
  • access for disabled people;
  • the cost to the taxpayer of the investment in local stations and lines not benefiting locals.