Recent letter from Chris Grayling regarding rail compensation.

Performance on GTR’s Thameslink and Great Northern lines has been unacceptable since the timetable change on 20 May.

This is immensely frustrating for passengers and I would like to reassure you that my Department is holding the industry to account and monitoring progress on service improvements on a daily basis. However at the same time, I feel that the situation for passengers has not improved quickly enough on Thameslink and Great Northern lines and would like to apologise for the continuing disruption.

The rail industry accepts that the service passengers have experienced over recent weeks is not good enough. Today I am pleased to confirm that a compensation scheme for Thameslink and Great Northern passengers has been announced by GTR.

The compensation will be designed to refund season ticket holders up to one month where they have suffered severe disruption and up to one week where disruption to services has been moderate.

Further details of the scheme, the passenger categories and stations eligible for compensation will be set out by GTR next week. We expect the scheme to open for claims in the coming weeks for timetable disruption suffered between 20 May 2018 and 28 July 2018.

The scheme will work in a similar fashion to last year’s Southern compensation scheme, and GTR will be implementing administrative processes that worked well for customers and helped make claiming a refund as easy as possible.

When the details of the compensation scheme are public, I have asked GTR to clearly communicate with passengers how they can make their claim and ensure the process is straightforward.

On 15 July, GTR will implement their interim timetable – which is the next step in improving reliability and performance for passengers. It will allow GTR to slowly build up services to the originally planned May timetable.

Please be assured that my Department and I are doing everything possible to ensure passengers get the service they rightly expect from our railway.

I realise that compensation is simply a step in the right direction and that what passengers want is the reliable, efficient services they were promised. That is why we are keeping a firm rein and oversight as the industry work to right the failures of the timetable implementation.

Rt Hon Chris Grayling MP

Secretary of State for Transport