Britain's railways have worst year on record for cancellations - with CrossCountry and Northern major offenders
Reliability on Britain’s railways has reached a record low with more than one in 25 services cancelled in the past year, with CrossCountry and Northern two of the worst offenders.
More than 217,000 services were fully axed in the year to February 1, analysis of the latest Office of Rail and Road data found.
A further 165,000 were part-cancelled, meaning they did not serve at least one of their scheduled stops.
The rail industry produces a cancellations score – counting full cancellations as one and part-cancellations as half – which shows the equivalent of 4.09 per cent of the 7.3 million trains planned in that period were cancelled.
That is the worst reliability performance in figures dating back to March 2015, when the annual cancellations score was just 1.86 per cent.
The operator with the highest cancellations score in the year to February 1 was CrossCountry at 7.4 per cent.
It has suffered disruption for a number of years, partly because of a driver training backlog and industrial action.
CrossCountry reduced its timetabled services between August 10 and November 9 2024 in an effort to limit on-the-day cancellations, and has been put on a remedial plan to improve its performance.
Avanti West Coast had the second highest cancellations score at 7 per cent, followed by Northern at 6 per cent.
Northern reduced its timetable over Christmas to try and cut down cancellations, which saw one in 10 services axed over the October half term.
Rail journalist Tony Miles of Modern Railways magazine attributed the high number of cancellations to “a mixture of industrial relations and staff shortages”.
Mr Miles said operators such as Northern are suffering poor reliability on Sundays as they rely on train crews working paid overtime on those days, which some are refusing to do.
A spokesperson for Northern said: “We are sorry for our recent performance, accept it has not been good enough and understand the impact this has on our customers.
“We are working hard to address issues with traincrew availability so we can improve reliability for our customers.
“We recently secured a new rest-day working agreement for our train drivers, however an offer that was put to our conductors in the North West to secure a commitment to work on Sundays was rejected by their members in a referendum vote.”
A CrossCountry spokesperson said: “Over the last six months we have implemented a number of changes across the service that have reduced cancellations and improved punctuality.
“However, we recognise that there is more work to be done to ensure we consistently meet high service standards, improve performance and provide a more resilient service.
“We continue to work with the Department for Transport and Network Rail to deliver further improvements for our customers and the communities we serve.”