Dartford hasn’t had a lot to shout about over the last twelve months. We’ve had some sad news about Arjo Wiggins and GSK in Dartford whilst progress on major new developments in Lowfield Street and the Ebbsfleet Valley has been badly affected by the state of the property market.

It hasn’t all been bad news however, and with the New Year upon us, I thought now would be a good time to reflect on some of the positive things that are happening in our borough.

The year’s most significant event of course has been the start of domestic train services between Ebbsfleet, Stratford and St Pancras. Not everyone in Dartford is necessarily in a position to use it, but if you were to ask any business that’s new to the borough why they chose to come here, the chances are that the new rail link will feature prominently on their list of reasons. Speed of communications is everything in business and the ability to get into the centre of London in a quarter of hour makes Dartford a very attractive incentive for any organisation. Blacklaws Davis for example, a major family law firm that opened an office in Dartford back in August, came here for precisely these reasons. No other area was able to match Dartford for the speed and quality of its road and rail links, the firm found, and in the end the choice to come to Dartford was an easy one.

There’s also been some good news on the education and skills front in 2009. After a nervous wait the necessary funding for the rebuilding of North West Kent College’s Dartford campus was finally released earlier this year. And at The Bridge in Dartford, the new community primary school has just opened and plans for the Sustainable Construction Academy (SusCon) are now well advanced thanks to a major multi-million pound grant.

So despite the knocks we’ve taken this year I think that Dartford has every reason to look forward to 2010 with confidence. Few areas in Britain after all are better placed to prosper than Dartford.