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South Western Railway sorry for delays in compensating for... delays




South Western Railway was below the national average time for settling delay claims
South Western Railway was below the national average time for settling delay claims

THE train company serving the New Forest and Christchurch has apologised for being one of the worst performing train firms for handling compensation claims.

South Western Railway settled claims within the target of 20 working days in 70% of cases – well below the national average of 92%.

The numbers were published by the Office for Road and Rail (ORR) regulator and covered April to October as the first six months of the 2019/19 financial year.

SWR said in a statement: “Last year we experienced a backlog of claims, causing some processing delays which we are very sorry for.

“In spring, we will be introducing a new automated delay repay system which will make claiming compensation even easier for our customers.”

Performances worse than SWR were by Hull Trains which met the 20-day deadline to settle in about 32% of cases; TransPennine Express 46%; and Great Western Railway 76%.

The national figures showed that on average across the industry 84% of claims were approved out of 3-million submitted. Fifteen out of 23 train operators were above the national average settlement time.

Stephanie Tobyn, deputy consumers director at ORR, said: “This is the first time ORR has published data on the important area of delay compensation.

“Passengers have rightly made claims for these journeys and it is good to see that train companies, in the main, are responding to these promptly.

“ORR will be meeting with all train companies later this month to review the current time-scales for compensation claims, particularly where these are below target.”

SWR’s poor compensation performance adds to falling customer satisfaction caused by delays as well as regular strikes from its ongoing dispute with the RMT union.

As reported by the A&T, Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable recently called for the company to have tough new conditions imposed or lose its franchise.



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