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Rail Passenger Rights and Obligations

Rail Passenger Rights & Obligations

Information and tickets

Punctuality and cancellations

Cleanliness

Customer satisfaction

Complaints and compensation

Assistance

Information and tickets

Online:

At the station:

  • All of our stations have information screens showing upcoming departures any delays
  • Station staff or help points are available to provide information or assistance at all stations
  • You can buy tickets at ticket offices or by using ticket machines at most stations
  • Step free access and/or ramp access is available at many stations

Please check our station information pages for more information.

We provide assistance for customers making any journey.  

Punctuality and cancellations

Service delays and cancellation

  Gatwick Express
GTR overall
Overall average delay to services
2.52 minutes
1.21 minutes
Services with on-time departure from origin station (less than one minute late)  78.1%
76.5%
Services with on-time arrival at destination station (less than one minute late)  35%
57.9%
Services with a delay on arrival at destination between 1 and 59 minutes  57.2%
36.4%
Services with a delay on arrival at destination between 60 and 119 minutes  0.005%
0.04%
Services with a delay on arrival at destination of 120 minutes or more  0.000%
0.004%
Services scheduled to run that were cancelled in full or partially due to on-the-day disruption 1 6.3%
4.4% 
Represents the figure for all services operated by Gatwick Express, Great Northern, Southern and Thameslink for year April 2023 to March 2024.
1 - Part cancelled services are counted as 0.5 and fully cancelled services as 1 in these figures.

Disruption

Where disruption affects services, we have a detailed plan of how we will communicate the problem, impact and advice to customers.

Real information on how to travel for any incident will be shown on our website and on information screens at affected stations.

Cleanliness

Our trains are cleaned at regular intervals during the day by mobile cleaning teams and overnight at all major depots. 300,000 vehicle cleans are undertaken each four-week period.

We also apply long-term anti-viral cleaning products to all trains every 28 days and undertake periodic deep cleaning operations.

We conduct independent train cleaning audits each month across our locations and trains.Scores and benchmarks for this can be found here.

All Gatwick Express, Great Northern and Thameslink trains and many Southern trains are equipped with air-conditioning.

Toilets are available onboard all Thameslink and Gatwick Express Trains. Toilets are not available on Great Northern services to/from Moorgate.

Many stations also have toilet facilities. Details can be found on our station information pages.

Customer satisfaction

Our historic National Passenger Survey results and targets are available here.

Complaints

Information on our complaints handling, refunds and compensation for non-compliance with service quality standard procedure can be downloaded. Southern, Thameslink, Great Northern, Gatwick Express.

  2023/2024
Number of complaints processed* 30,891
Main categories for complaints Fares, retailing and refunds (39%)
Delay Compensation Schemes (15%)
Train service performance (14%)
Staff conduct and availability (7%)
Company policy (4%)
Quality on train (6%)
Provision of information (4%)
Total number of complaints received* 30,900
Percentage of complaints responded to in 10 working days
81.19%
Percentage of complaints responded to in 20 working days
97.4%
Average response time 6.6 working days

Represents the annual figures from April 2023 to March 2024 for Gatwick Express, Great Northern, Southern and Thameslink. *Please note that complaints processed may include those received at the end of the previous year and complaints received at the end of the year may not be processed until the beginning of the next

As a result of customer feedback, the following key improvements have been undertaken in the last year:

  • We continued to enhance our back-office processes to improve speedy decision making for Delay Repay claims
  • We made changes to the booking confirmation to include a link to information about refunds
  • We made changes to the Delay Repay system to make information clearer and easier to locate
  • We arranged for the validity of smartcards to be reset whenever a replacement is issued

We provide data in relation to our passenger-facing activities, including complaints received and performance, to demonstrate we’re complying with our obligations to customers. This information can be viewed on the ORR website.

Assistance

Information on our assistance policy and instructions on how to book assistance are available on our assisted travel page.

We received a total number of 133,518 assistance bookings for Gatwick Express, Great Northern, Southern and Thameslink between April 2023 and March 2024.