One of the north of England’s main railway companies has a cancellation rate almost three times higher than officially recorded, figures show.
A government body that collates information about train reliability released the stats on Friday after it wrote to train companies over concerns that they were taking advantage of a legal loophole to vastly under-report cancellations.
Figures obtained by the Guardian last year showed that, during the October half-term holiday, TransPennine Express (TPE) cancelled 30% of all trains, and at least 20% each subsequent week until 20 November last year. Most of those services were cancelled in full, but some started or ended at different stations from those advertised on the May 2022 timetable.
However, when it submits its performance statistics to the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) TPE was able to report cancellations of between 5.6% and 11.8% for the same period (23 October to 20 November).
That was because the ORR allows companies to effectively ignore trains preemptively cancelled up to 10pm the night before. Such cancellations are known as “P-coded services”. These trains do not then appear in industry systems, count towards official figures or allow automatic delay repay claims.
Last month, the ORR wrote to all train operators to confirm they will support action to stop the use of “P-coded” pre-cancellations and ask them to provide records showing the number of times they happen.
The ORR has now released data for the first time for on the day and “P-coded” pre-cancellations by cause for each operator for the period between 8 January and 4 February.
It shows that TPE’s “P-coded” cancellations – which were due to a shortage of available crew and were in some cases were partial cancellations – affected more than 3,000 trains.
A total of 23 out of 24 train operators reported to ORR their number of “P-coded” pre-cancellations. The only operator who did not report data by the specified deadline was Caledonian Sleeper.
TPE, which has been approached for comment, did not dispute the Guardian’s figures last year and apologised, blaming staff sickness, an intensive crew training programme and infrastructure issues outside its control.
While the lower rate of cancellations reported to the ORR has related purely to on-the-day cancellations, it does not take into account the disruption of passengers who have booked in advance.
That includes people who booked a train to get to an airport to catch a flight, or emerged from an airport late at night and were unable to continue an onward journey.
A spokesperson for TransPennine Express blamed what the company said was the combined impact of prolonged higher-than-usual sickness levels, a driver training programme and a lack of a driver overtime agreement.
“These decisions are not taken lightly, and pre-planned cancellations are only applied (in accordance with industry guidelines) when resources are not available to cover advertised services in order to maximise advance notice of service changes for customers,” said a spokesperson.
“When services are cancelled in advance, we ensure these are represented in industry systems as well as Journeycheck, via our website, to give customers as much information as possible.”
