ScotRail hit with £1.1m compensation bill for delays

In 2018/19 the under fire rail operator paid out £1,119,818 as part of its own Delay Repay scheme, a rise of more than 70 per cent in 12 months.

Passengers qualify for compensation if their train was delayed more than 30 minutes, or they miss their connection because of a delay caused by ScotRail.

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The news will come as little surprise to many Fife passengers with the Kingdom one of the worse regions for train delays, service cancellations and station skipping.

At a public meeting in Kirkcaldy in February, ScotRail boss, Alex Hynes faced a backlash from disgruntled passengers over the poor service in Fife.

While acknowledging issues faced by its customers in Fife, ScotRail maintain that services and performance is improving. Recently published figures show that in 2017, there were 2050 instances of station skipping with that figure dropping to just over 500, in 2018 a decline of some 75 per cent.

The compensation sum was revealed by Scottish Transport Minister Michael Matheson in Holyrood yesterday following a written question parliamentary question from Liberal Democrat MSP Mike Rumbles.

“It won’t come as a surprise that, after the worst performance record fro over a decade, ScotRail was forced to pay out over £1million in compensation last year. Tat is a huge increase on previous years,” said the MSP

Mr Matheson said that speed restrictions because of hot weather and the affects of Storm Ali last year had their part to play in the increase in compensation claims.

A spokesman for ScotRail spokesman: “We know how much of an inconvenience it is to customers when things don’t go to plan and it is only right that they are compensated when that happens.”