Passengers in the West Midlands have been left facing severe disruption due to delays and cancellations

Data from the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) revealed Avanti West Coast was the worst offender for delays between October and December last year.

It showed only 34 per cent of its services – which run across the country – ran on time, with the situation 11.3 per cent worse than the same period in 2021.

Other figures showed just over half of West Midlands Trains services, made up of West Midlands Railway and London Northwestern Railway, were on time.

The sum came in at 51.87 per cent, down 7.6 per cent from the year before. For CrossCountry, the figure was 43.3 per cent which was down 9.3 per cent.

And the most reliable in the region was Transport for Wales at 56.6 per cent, down 0.4 per cent from the year before and the second-best performing nationally.

The "on time" metric records trains arriving within 60 seconds of their scheduled arrival.

Feras Alshaker, director, planning and performance at ORR, said: "Our official statistics confirm that train reliability is not good enough. Even on non-strike days the number of trains being cancelled is too high and we know for some operators these figures will have been higher, due to pre-cancellations.

"There is no quick fix, but ORR is working closely with the industry to address these issues with train performance so that passengers can travel with confidence."

The industry body said pressure on the industry from industrial action was included over the period with 10 national strike days. There was some severe weather which also impacted performance. A quarter of the days (23 days) were classified as "severely disrupted". The "on time" metric records trains arriving within 60 seconds of their scheduled arrival.

Meanwhile the ORR showed Avanti West Coast had the highest number of cancellations at 10.5 per cent, followed by CrossCountry at 10.3 per cent. Meanwhile West Midlands Trains had 5.1 per cent, improved from the year before, and Transport for West Midlands which also improved.

The official regulator has requested requested and received regional performance improvement plans from Network Rail. These contain specific actions and milestones against which the regulator will assess progress. ORR has also asked Network Rail to do further work to ensure there is a more resilient timetable that is deliverable every day.

A spokesman for West Midlands Trains said: "Running a reliable service is our top priority and it is disappointing that the widespread industrial action on the railway in the second half of 2022 has impacted recent performance.

"The new timetable we introduced in December was designed to provide a more reliable service for passengers. We have already seen punctuality improve this year and more changes are planned in May to continue this trend."

A spokesman for CrossCountry said: "We recognise that there were a greater number of cancellations over this period and are sorry for the inconvenience that this caused our customers. This was a result of a prolonged period of industrial action, engineering work on parts of the network and some infrastructure issues, which affected our ability to run services. We will continue to do everything we can to mitigate against these cases, working with the wider industry to provide the best service possible.”

A spokesman for Avanti West Coast : "The vast majority of these figures were recorded before the introduction of our new timetable in December. This increased the number of services we run by more than 40 per cent, and customers are seeing the benefits of that with more seats and more frequent services.

"Performance has also improved significantly, with four per cent of our services cancelled over the last two weeks, far lower than the figures in this report."

Colin Lea, planning and performance director at Transport for Wales, said: “The latest ORR figures reflect the hard work which has taken place to keep the punctuality of our services consistent and reduce the number of cancellations by two per cent, while providing eight per cent more passenger services than the previous year.

“However, there are lots of areas to improve and we are committed to improving our overall performance through investment in once-in-a-generation infrastructure projects and by spending more than £800m on brand new trains to improve the punctuality, reliability and customer experience on our services.”