Rail passengers will be able to claim compensation for delayed trains directly from the website where they bought their ticket, the government has said, as part of a shake-up to make rail travel simpler.
Passengers who use third-party retailers such as Trainline to buy tickets currently, have to submit applications for refunds to the relevant train operator for processing.
Compensation claim systems for individual train operators will be merged into a single consolidated service under Great British Railways (GBR), the new nationalised rail body.
The Department for Transport said the GBR site will also process refunds for customers using private ticketing websites, if the retailer and passenger opt in to share their purchase details.
The latest full-year figures from the rail regulator, the Office of Rail and Road, showed that train operators paid out £138m in 2023-24 for delayed journeys.
While some train operators and ticket types offer automated “delay repay”, particularly for advance e-tickets and season ticket holders, other claims can be more complicated.
The most recent Department for Transport (DfT) research, from 2023, showed that an increasing proportion, 47%, of passengers whose journeys were sufficiently delayed now received compensation, with some train companies also now alerting customers when they become eligible for partial refunds.
However, more than half of customers do not bother to apply. Passengers who have bought paper tickets at the station can post tickets or more usually scan them and complete the process online, but can be passed on from one company to another for longer journeys. The DfT said that passengers currently “have to contend with a complex system across 14 different train companies, which creates confusion and frustration”.
The transport secretary, Heidi Alexander, said: “Using the railway will be simpler and more reliable under Great British Railways. When services are delayed, passengers should be able to easily claim the compensation they’re owed.
“These necessary changes will ensure people can claim delay repay compensation more quickly and the industry can invest taxpayers’ money in the things that really matter for passengers; freezing fares and delivering train and station upgrades, rather than losing out to fare dodgers and fraud.”
The DfT will also bring in changes to railcard and ticketing terms and conditions to cut the revenue lost to fraud.
Passengers buying discounted tickets using railcards will need to pass additional checks. A “simple validation” process, designed to save about £20m a year in lost revenue, will be trialled later this year, where passengers will be asked to scan their railcard or enter details when buying discounted tickets at a ticket machine or online.
It follows a recent decision to tighten refund rules for flexible tickets, which will from April only be refundable before travel is due. The DfT said that the move will tackle fraudulent claims for refunds for tickets that have been used but not scanned or stamped, losing the railway £40m annually.
