Nearly one train in eight was officially late in the last year, with rail firms in the South East performing worse, despite improved punctuality from the franchise that includes Southern.
The moving annual average (MAA) of the official Public Performance Measure (PPM) at the end of June was 88%, according to the Office of Rail and Road (ORR), meaning that 12% of trains were late.
The new figures do not include the recent Waterloo upgrade
This was a slight improvement on the annujal PPM to the end of April (87.7%), which was the lowest annual score recorded since 2005-06.
The MAA for the London and South East sector was 85.9%. The performance of Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR), which runs Southern services, improved by 8.3 percentage points to 84.4% in the latest MAA.
The ORR pointed out however that this was still 1.6 percentage points lower than the 86.0% recorded in the year ending June 2016.
Under the PPM, short distance trains are considered ‘on time’ if they are up to five minutes late – or 10 minutes for long distance trains.
Nationally the proportion of trains cancelled or significantly late (CaSL) in the year ending June 2017 was 3.6%.
Again, the London and South East sector performed worse than the national average, with a CaSL MAA of 4.4%. The ORR said this was up half a percentage point compared with the previous year.
The figures are in the Passenger and Freight Rail Performance 2017-18 Q1 Statistical Release published by the ORR. All data within the release was supplied by Network Rail.
In July, the Rail Delivery Group, which represents Network Rail and rail firms, announced plans to report train punctuality to the minute and at every station on the timetable rather than only at the final destination.
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