Train passenger sues Greater Anglia over ‘woeful’ service

A commuter on Greater Anglia’s Ipswich line is suing the train operator over ‘continually’ delayed services.

Seph Pochin had tracked the delays between his home in Halesworth, Suffolk and Ipswich for a full year between February 2017 and February 2018, claiming that the delays add up to 28 hours a year, the BBC writes.

Pochink described the service offered by Greater Anglia as “woeful” after 183 of the 550 journeys he made arrived late, and said he had considered moving house to avoid the delays which became so bad that one service was delayed by 100 minutes. The majority of trains were between one and 10 minutes late, he said.

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Greater Anglia has a delay-repay scheme, but instead of using it, Pochin paid £35 in August 2017 to launch a small claims case against the company under the Consumer Rights Act 2016 “to highlight the regular deficiencies with the service”.

The following month, Pochin and the rail company both agreed to mediation to resolve the matter, but Greater Anglia failed to provide dates to meet, so Pochin applied for a judgement ruling, and the train operator was ordered to pay him £350 in December.

In February, Pochin said he still hadn't received the money, and paid £77 for a warrant to be served on Greater Anglia to seize assets worth £350. Greater Anglia will now have to pay the sum or face the bailiffs, the BBC writes.

Greater Anglia admitted 23% of delays on its network were “directly attributable to Greater Anglia due to incidents such as train faults”.

A spokeswoman said the line Pochin travels on had been upgraded by Network Rail in a £68m scheme “to make the train service more reliable”.

“Hopefully, this case will result in train operators making compensation for delays easier to get,” Stephen Joseph, of the Better Transport Group said.

“However, passengers in general don’t want compensation, they want trains that run on time.”