Passenger train cancellations reach highest level in ORR's latest performance report

Rail performance slightly declined in October-December 2024, compared with the corresponding quarter in 2023.

According to the Office of Rail and Road’s latest statistics, 62.1% of services during the three- month period were ‘on-time’ (representing a slight 0.4 percentage point decrease from October-December 2023).

Cancellations increased to 5.1% of all services. This is the highest for any individual quarter since ORR began recording in 2014, and contributed to the joint-highest level of cancellations across a 12-month period up to December 2024.

However, the true figure when adjusted for ‘p-coded’ cancellations was 5.7%. ORR reported that in the latest quarter 14 operators had used this practice of pre-cancelling trains before the timetable is finalised at 2200 the day before.

ORR acknowledged that an increase in the number of days where there was severe disruption across the network contributed to the higher cancellation rate. This included dealing with the impacts of Storms Bert and Darragh, broken rails at both Acton and Wealdstone, and an overhead line failure at Newton West Junction in Scotland.

Greater Anglia was the most punctual operator in October- December 2024, although its 82.8% punctuality score was 1.4 percentage points lower than the corresponding quarter in 2023.

Avanti West Coast (35.6%), CrossCountry (41.1%) and TransPennine Express (43.3%) recorded the lowest scores for punctuality. However, both TPE and Northern recorded slight improvements on their scores.

In total, 1.8 million trains were planned on the timetable during this period, up 4% on the same quarter in the previous year.

Feras Alshaker, director of planning and performance at ORR, said: “Thirty-four severely disrupted days where one in 20 trains or more were cancelled, an increase of nine days on the same quarter last year, and less than two-thirds of trains arriving at their station on time is not what the passengers expect.”