Train firms accused of holding compensation back from passengers

The Transport Salaried Staffs Association (TSSA) said rail operators were paid £184m by NR last year for problems which led to late or cancelled trains, but gave only a fraction of the money to passengers affected by disruption.

The union said figures from the Department for Transport showed that only five of the 23 train operators told Ministers how much they gave back to passengers in 2011, and on average that amounted to £650,000 per company.

If that figure applied across all 23 firms, it would mean less than £15m was paid out to passengers last year, the union claimed.

General secretary Manuel Cortes said: “The original train robbers got 30 years for stealing £3m, but each year these private firms are effectively pocketing 20 or 30 times that amount which they should pass on to long-suffering passengers but don’t.

“Network Rail and the private companies are operating a cash merry-go-round in which the passenger gets taken for a ride.”

The union wants Transport Secretary Justine Greening to force the private train companies to publish how much they receive in compensation and how much they then pay out to passengers.

Mr Cortes said train companies got compensation when trains were more than five minutes late but passengers did not get a full refund until the train was two hours late. A spokesman for the Association of Train Operating Companies said the TSSA was being misleading; the money paid to operators by NR and the money operators paid to passengers were two separate arrangements.