TRAIN companies serving the county have improved their performance in the past 12 months, according to a new report.

The Office of Rail and Road released figures on Passenger and Freight Rail Performance, for January 1 to March 31 this year, compared to the same period last year.

It has reported on public performance measure (PPM) – the percentage of trains arriving at their final destination within five minutes of their scheduled arrival time, or within 10 minutes for long-distance services.

These statistics also include train cancellations and significant lateness.

Chiltern Railways’ PPM was 94.7 per cent, an improvement of 0.7 percentage points, First Great Western’s was 91.2 per cent, up 4.7 percentage points, and CrossCountry’s was 90.4 per cent, an increase of 6.5 percentage points.

The report praised Chiltern Railways for improving despite a landslip in January, which closed the line between Banbury and Leamington Spa for six weeks.

It said: “CrossCountry also delivered an upturn in performance on some of their other services that were not affected by the landslip.”

The three companies’ performance on cancellations and significant lateness – longer than 30 minutes at the final destination – also improved year on year.

Chiltern Railways’ total in this category was 1.5 per cent, down 0.8 percentage points.

First Great Western recorded 2.4 per cent, down 2.2 percentage points on the previous year, while CrossCountry’s total was 4.3 per cent, down by the same amount.