Which? response to latest ORR delay compensation claims statistics

Alex Hayman, Which? Managing Director of Public Markets, said:

“It is unacceptable that train companies have left people making almost a quarter of a million compensation claims waiting more than a month to get a resolution – piling further hassle and stress on passengers who have already suffered from severe delays and unreliability in the last year. It’s little wonder trust in the rail industry is worryingly low.

“The rail review must ensure that automatic compensation is introduced across the network so that passengers can have their claims resolved quickly and no longer have to jump through hoops to get the money they are owed.”

Notes to editor

– The number of claims not closed within 20 working days between rail periods 1 to 10 in 2018-19 (1 April 2018 to 5 January 2019) was 224,240: https://orr.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/40838/delay-compensation-claims-factsheet-1819-Q3.pdf

– Which? has been doing its consumer insight tracker since July 2012 and in January 2019 trust in train travel is at its lowest level over this period at 20%.

– Which?’s tracker survey, updated every two months, reports our survey data on consumer worries, trust, and financial distress. It can be filtered by age, income, gender or region. Populus, on behalf of Which?, conduct bi-monthly surveys of 2000 consumers to gauge perception and attitudes to the consumer landscape. Data were weighted to be demographically representative of the UK population.

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