The reliability of Britain’s trains fell to new lows in December, official figures show, with record levels of cancellations even on days when the railway was not affected by strikes.
While train operators cut their schedules back in advance by about a third because of industrial action, almost one in 12 of those remaining services due to run still ended up being cancelled.
Avanti West Coast, the worst-performing operator, had 19% of its trains eventually failing to run, after it attempted to increase the number of timetabled intercity services.
Labour said the figures underlined that the railways were “in crisis”, while the government said it was working closely with operators to ensure more staff were recruited to improve reliability.
Train operators planned to run about 300,000 services in the four weeks to 7 January, about a third fewer than normal for the season, and fewer than ran even during the height of the coronavirus pandemic. It represents the lowest number in a month since the regulator, the Office of Rail and Road, started compiling this data in 2014.
The ORR data shows 8% of trains across Britain were cancelled or part-cancelled in that period, double the level of the previous four weeks. For many passengers, the disruption may have been worse, with the cancellation score not including trains removed from schedules up to 10pm the previous evening.
The ORR has since told companies their performance statistics should not be massaged by failing to include evening-before cancellations – known as “pre-cancellation” or “P-coding” – often done when operators do not have enough staff or trains in the right locations.
Most of the planned cancellations were, however, down to strikes, with the RMT union taking nine days of action when passenger services were running, and Aslef striking on one day. An RMT overtime ban also affected some operators severely.
Almost one in five scheduled trains failed to run at Avanti West Coast, which had pledged to restore its timetable to three trains an hour on popular intercity routes.
The First Group and Trenitalia-owned operator, which runs trains between London and other cities on the west coast mainline to Glasgow, has been told to improve services or lose its contract from April.
Its trains were also badly affected at the start of the year when flooding closed the line between Glasgow and Carlisle.
A spokesperson told the PA news agency that performance on its intercity network had improved steadily since early January and it was now running far more services overall than it had done in the autumn. He said: “We know that our customers have not been getting the service they deserve and we’re sorry for that.”
Southeastern, which was taken over by the government in October 2021 after an accounting scandal at the private operator Go-Ahead, had the second worst cancellation rate in the period, at 12.2%.
A spokesperson for the Rail Delivery Group, which represents operators, told PA that the pandemic had had a long-term impact on services by reducing staff training in 2020 and 2021 and increasing absence rates.
He said the ongoing industrial dispute with unions had caused “severe disruption to services both on strikes days and on the days either side of them”.
A Department for Transport spokesperson said: “We are working closely with train operators to ensure disruption is kept to a minimum and long-term solutions are put in place, including the swift recruitment and training of new drivers.”
The shadow transport secretary, Louise Haigh, said: “Thirteen years of Conservative failure has left the country with second-rate infrastructure and rail services in crisis. The next Labour government will end this farce.”
