Delay Repay Dispute

[40fan]

On 27th May 2026 I was delayed on a journey from Morecambe to Stoke-on-Trent. I was using a Northern 55 West Day Ranger.

Starting at 1639 trains were cancelled between Morecambe and Lancaster, these were the 1639, 1700, 1732 and 1821. I rang customer services and asked for assstance and was assured the 1935 was running. It didn't. No attempt was made to provide rail replacement buses. In the end I travelled from Morecambe to Lancaster by taxi, I had no alternative since Northern abandoned me at Morecambe.

Luckily i was able to get from Lancasater to Manchester Piccadilly becauae Avanti West Coast were accepting all tickets because of the disruption at Carnforth. I travelled by AWC to prston and then on to manchester Piccadilly on Northern.

They have refunded my taxi fare, but say that my Delay Repay claim for arriving at my destination 119 minutes late is invalid because I did not complete all of my journey by train. Quite how I am expected to do this when they did not run any trains from Morecambe to Lancaster they have not explained.

I believe Northern are wrong and any advice would be most welcome.

 

[Watershed]

There is nothing in the NRCoT or their Passenger Charter which states the entire journey must be made by train to qualify for Delay Repay. You can hardly be penalised for minimising delays!

They are making things up, as is common for TOCs dealing with Delay Repay claims, so I would submit a complaint and see where that gets you. You can always escalate that if needed.

 

[40fan]

Thank you. I will do that.

 

[Belperpete]

Did you submit your delay repay claim as part of your claim for refund of your taxi fare? If you had submitted the DR claim separately using the standard DR web page, it should surely have been paid automatically, as they wouldn't know how you completed your journey.

 

[40fan]

I submitted my delay repay claim as part of my claim for my taxi fare.

I have challenged Northern's decison on the gounds of a breach of NRCoT condition 28.2. There was no rail service that I could use from Morecambe to Lancaster, and no replacemnt bus service was available.

My delay repay claim is considerably less that the cost of overnight accommodation in Morecambe would have been.

 

[Belperpete]

I submitted my delay repay claim as part of my claim for my taxi fare.

I have challenged Northern's decison on the gounds of a breach of NRCoT condition 28.2. There was no rail service that I could use from Morecambe to Lancaster, and no replacemnt bus service was available.

My delay repay claim is considerably less that the cost of overnight accommodation in Morecambe would have been.

I am not querying your right to the DR payment. I am saying that it would have been better to submit the DR claim separately in the standard way, that way when assessing that claim they would only have had the minimum information required by the form. Some people seem to think that the more information you give the better, unfortunately that is often not the case, it just complicates things.

As they have refunded your taxi fare, it is debatable whether they are in breach of the requirement to provide assistance. They have assisted you, by paying for you to take a taxi.

But how is that, and any hypothetical accomodation cost, relevant to your Delay Repay claim? You are entitled to what is specified in Northern's DR scheme, so surely that is what you should be quoting at them? And Northern refunding the taxi fare confirms that it was part of the journey for which you held a ticket.