Great Western Coffee Shop

Staggering figure - funded by the taxpayer, naturally.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/apr/17/record-compensation-payouts-passengers-uk-train-delays

But is that funded by the taxpayer, or simply returning monies paid by passengers for journeys that have gone wrong?

What would the figure be if every claim for delay and cancellation that could be made actually was made?

Does the increased use of advance fares rather than purchase at the time of travel lead to a lot more bookings being made and cancelled rather than not being made in the first place, thus boosting the repay element?

If you remove Avanti West Coast/Virgin West Coast from the figures then the total payout is about the same as it was in 2019/2020.

Shows what a nightmare time they’ve been having, and why the DfT have suddenly become keen to chuck extra money for Rest Day Working at them.

I don't agree, it is obviously too much, but when you consider fare income was £8.6bn it is about 1% of that income.

What I would be interested to know is do Toc's still receive money for delays from Network rail (and others) and how does that work with their fixed fee contracts?

Under franchising a lot of the toc profit (this was true for GWR) was made up of delay payments from Network Rail as the amount paid to the customer for delays was always much less than that paid from NR to the toc. Of course not all compensation comes from NR as the toc will also be responsible for delays and therefore compensation.

Yup, It was a while ago but I recall that at one point GNER of all franchises was having a bit of a moan as its profits had fallen because... Network Rail had greatly reduced the amount of infrastructure related delay on the London to Edinburgh line. A bit awkward.

In that context, worth looking at the latest figures & GWR's contribution to them!

https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/statistics/passenger-experience/delay-compensation-claims/

Also worth including the context that GWR has two-and-half times the number of passengers Avanti carries.

Anyway, you don’t need statistics to work out the rail industry is currently broken.  It’s just nice that a very generous compensation scheme is in place.