Letter: You can claim delay-repay for all journeys delayed by 15 mins or over

Dear Mr Downend, On behalf of Northern I apologise to your son, because we clearly let him down last Sunday.

There are reasons but certainly not excuses and I will try to explain those reasons here.

The immediate problem on Sunday was a lack of train crew, no excuse as I say, but we had an usually large amount of sickness from our depot in Sheffield, much of it at quite late notice, which clearly makes our rosters much less efficient.

We do have reserve (spare) conductors and drivers, but sadly by the early evening they were all fully occupied.

In such circumstances we will endeavour to get replacement road transport, but this is not always available and this sadly was the case on Sunday.

While I certainly don't want to belittle the situation that your son found himself in, the above is fact.

There are huge improvements coming to the railways here in the North, with new trains here now and operating.

And as important the roundly unpopular Pacer trains, which are no strangers to Elsecar, are going, which is so important as not only are they slow and uncomfortable, they are so much smaller than the trains that will replace them.

They also say something about rail travel here in the North, which I firmly believe is no longer acceptable, and I am confident that we will improve this in 2020.

Finally, apart from to repeat my apologies, please remember that you can claim delay-repay for all journeys delayed by 15 mins or over.

Just contact our Customer Experience Team in Sheffield, the details of which are on our website.