Delay Repay, operator by operator

What Delay Repay is

Delay Repay is a compensation scheme that pays you when a UK train arrives late. It sits on top of the rights every ticket already gives you and is run by each train operator separately. It pays out regardless of why the train was late. Signal failure, staff shortage, a swan on the line: it all counts.

The scheme is much more generous than the older Passenger's Charter it replaced. The Office of Rail and Road publishes quarterly figures on complaint handling and compensation volumes. Billions of pounds of fares move through the network every year, and a small but meaningful slice of that is refundable when trains run late.

The 15-minute threshold (and why it matters)

Most UK operators now pay from 15 minutes of delay. This is a change from the original 30-minute floor, and it is the single biggest reason ordinary commutes now qualify. A Tuesday where your 18:32 arrives at 18:49 instead of 18:34 is a claim.

Six still sit on the older 30-minute floor, and they are not the ones you would guess: LNER and CrossCountry are on the 30-minute scheme while Chiltern and Northern pay from 15. Checked against each operator's own page on 20 August 2026:

• 15 minutes: Avanti West Coast, c2c, Chiltern Railways, East Midlands Railway, Gatwick Express, Great Northern, Great Western Railway, Greater Anglia, London Northwestern Railway, Northern, South Western Railway, Southeastern, Southern, Thameslink, TransPennine Express, Transport for Wales, West Midlands Railway.
• 30 minutes: Caledonian Sleeper, CrossCountry, Hull Trains, LNER, Lumo, ScotRail.

Operators publish their own schedules on their websites. If you travel regularly on the same line, it is worth looking yours up once and writing the threshold down.

Which operators run it

Every UK passenger operator is required to run some form of Delay Repay, and they all take claims through their own website. There is no central portal. You claim from whoever issued the ticket, not whoever ran the late train (although in practice, on a single-operator journey, they are the same).

On a split-operator journey (say, a ticket routed LNER then TransPennine), you claim from the operator named on the ticket, and they handle the rest. If you bought through Trainline or a similar retailer, you still claim through the operator, not the retailer.

How Delay Repay is calculated

The calculation is the same everywhere, and only two things go into it: how late you arrived at your destination, and the single fare for the journey that was delayed. Not how late the train left, and not what your whole booking cost.

A worked example, because the halving is where people get it wrong. You paid £30 for a return, so each leg counts as £15. Your outbound arrived 35 minutes late. That is the 30 to 59 band, which pays half the single fare, so half of £15. You are owed £7.50.

Now say the outbound was two hours and ten minutes late instead. That is the top band, and on a return it pays the whole return fare: £30, not £15. It is one claim, and it covers the journey home too, so you would not claim for that direction as well even if it was also late. Two operators do not have this band. Lumo and Hull Trains pay half a return from one hour late, however long the delay, so £15 on this example.

Season-ticket holders are calculated differently again: you get a pro-rated daily value of the ticket rather than a share of a fare, worked out with a published formula. Per claim the numbers are small. They add up if you commute.

Open returns and flexible tickets

An open return is still a return, so the same halving applies and the delayed leg is assessed on half the total. The wrinkle is proof: with an open return there is no booked train, so the operator works from the service you actually travelled on. Keep the ticket and note the departure you took.

Flexible season tickets and carnets sit between the two. Operators generally divide the cost by the number of journeys the ticket allows and treat that as the single fare.

The time limit

28 days from the date of the journey is the standard across the national scheme, and it is the deadline most people miss because nothing reminds you.

A handful of operators allow longer, and a few will consider a late claim if you explain the delay in claiming. Neither is something to rely on. If you are inside 28 days the claim is routine; outside it you are asking for a favour.

How to claim

You need four things: the date of travel, the scheduled and actual times, the booking reference or ticket image, and your bank details for the refund. Most operators accept the claim online. A few still prefer post, which you can ignore: use the online form.

The claim takes about five minutes if you have the booking confirmation email open. Payouts usually arrive within two to four weeks, by the same method you paid (card refund or bank transfer).

Deadlines and record-keeping

You have 28 days from the date of travel. Every operator on the list above publishes the same window, so there is no longer deadline to fall back on. If you miss it, the claim is gone. It is worth filing within a week if you can, because you will still remember the journey detail if the form asks for it.

Keep the booking confirmation. A screenshot of the timetable on the day (from Realtime Trains) is a nice-to-have if there is any dispute about the actual arrival time, but operators can usually see their own data.

Things the forms do not tell you

A few small things that trip people up:

• A cancellation counts as a delay for the purpose of Delay Repay. You claim based on how long the next available train took you. You do not need to prove you took that specific train.
• If you abandoned the trip entirely because of the delay, you are entitled to a full refund instead of compensation. The operator's refund form is separate from the Delay Repay form. Do not use both for the same journey.
• Advance tickets are still covered. A common myth is that cheap tickets are not refundable. Advance tickets cannot be changed or refunded for ordinary reasons, but Delay Repay is not an ordinary reason: the scheme pays on any valid ticket.
• You can claim for everyone on the booking if you paid for the whole group. Operators ask for the number of passengers on the form. This is how they calculate the payout.

That is the whole scheme. It is less complicated than it looks, and the money does land. If you travel by train more than once a month, a twenty-minute audit of the last 28 days is usually worth doing.

Sources

• The compensation and refund rights every rail ticket carries, from the rail regulator. Office of Rail and Road, rail passenger compensation and refund rights
• The quarterly figures behind the claim counts, published per operator. Office of Rail and Road data portal, delay compensation claims
• The contract you enter into when you buy a ticket. National Rail Conditions of Travel
• Free and independent, and where an unresolved complaint goes after the operator has had its 40 working days. Rail Ombudsman
• The independent watchdog behind the passenger research on how many people claim. Transport Focus
• Every threshold and claim window above was checked against the operator's own published page on 20 August 2026, and the two-hour band on 30 September 2026. Greater Anglia, East Midlands Railway, CrossCountry and ScotRail block automated reads, so for those we read the most recent archived copy of their own page. We could not read West Midlands Railway or London Northwestern Railway at all, so for those two the two-hour band follows the national scheme. Each operator's claim link sits on its own page in this directory.

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