Rail passenger compensation figures for Yorkshire highlight the need for action - Andrew Vine
The Sheffield Heeley MP finds herself in charge of a transport network that is too often hopelessly bad, particularly the railways which fail to take passengers where they need to go, or makes them late.
As a Yorkshire MP, Ms Haigh will be acutely aware of how badly served the people of this county are by the railways. Her constituents are among the passengers who have direct and infuriating experience of the creaking unreliability of the trains.
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Hide AdThe whole of the north is being let down by the railways, but Yorkshire arguably suffers more than anywhere else. There are routes and bottlenecks within our borders which have become nationally notorious because they are so poor. Think of the grindingly slow services between Leeds and Manchester, or Huddersfield, the UK’s capital of cancellations.


Decades of under-investment, the unravelling of a botched privatisation model, broken promises on improvements and never-ending industrial action are all elements of an almighty mess.
Sorting it out is one of the greatest challenges the government faces, and doing so will be neither rapidly achievable nor easily affordable for Ms Haigh.
Just how ghastly life is for the travelling public was emphasised yet again last week when the Office of Rail and Road published its annual figures for passengers successfully claiming compensation from rail operators for late or cancelled trains.
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Hide AdTo the surprise of nobody obliged to use the trains on a regular basis, claims are at a record high – 7.6m between April 2023 and March this year, an increase of 30 per cent on the previous 12 months.
Yorkshire’s three principal operators are among the worst offenders, paying out compensation to 1.45m passengers. That’s roughly equivalent to the populations of Leeds and Sheffield combined, which is mind-boggling.
Northern Trains had a 56 per cent increase, paying out to 363,282 people, LNER 22 per cent with 784,913 claims and TransPennine Express 21 per cent and 311,070 payouts.
And since all three operators are effectively nationalised, the refunds of fares – whether full or in part – for delays and cancellations are coming out of all our pockets.
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Hide AdWe can guess at the stories of frustration, anger and upset that lie behind these numbers, the people late for work, unable to get home for hours, or missing important appointments.
But there is another story here – of a fragmented and inefficient rail network that is structurally flawed and in urgent need of reform to make it work properly.
Rail operators complain, with some justification, that they are taking all the blame for services that don’t run or are late when it is not always their fault.
The reasons for delays and cancellations are often down to Network Rail, which is responsible for tracks and signalling.
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Hide AdThe clumsy division of responsibilities between the people running the trains and those maintaining the line has been the central flaw of the rail network ever since privatisation in 1994.
This model for operating a railway never worked properly, and its deficiencies have only become more apparent as the years have passed.
The record figures for compensation show all too clearly that it is the poor old passengers stuck on platforms or trains going nowhere fast who are being saddled with the consequences.
Labour has committed to nationalising rail franchises as their contracts come to an end, and bringing infrastructure and operators under the control of a single body.
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Hide AdBetter central control was also the intention of the Conservatives, who were going to call the body Great British Railways. They never got round to doing much more about it than talk, however, which is pretty much the story of most of the promised improvements to Yorkshire’s railways.
The north has for far too long been the poor relation when it came to receiving government investment in railways, and that is also clear from the figures for compensation payments.
While our operators have inflicted increased problems on passengers, those serving the southeast and London have, in several cases, done well by them, with claims against Southeastern and Greater Anglia falling over the past year.
These companies are obviously delivering services that people can rely on, and passengers in Yorkshire deserve no less.
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