A reply from Ms Sue Evans!

Dear Dominic

Thank you for your email and please do feel free to call me Sue. I hope you don’t mind me calling you Dominic.

As Mark said in his reply, the performance of the line between Oxford and London Paddington is nowhere near where it should be.

While the responsibility for much of this lies with Network Rail, accountability to our customers most definitely lies with us, and when things do go wrong we do everything in our power to make up time.

It is disappointing that despite every effort to do so today your train still arrived two minutes late. We understand how irritating this can be.

Our aim is for every train to arrive on time, every time. It is a challenge and is not easy. We are making progress, and last week delays caused by train failures were the lowest since the beginning of the current franchise in 2006. The week was not however one of good performance, and there have been far too many infrastructure problems, especially with signal and points failures.

We are working with Network Rail to help them do better at this. I know you don’t want platitudes or excuses. I know you want your train to depart and arrive at the times we say it will. This is what we want too and I am sorry it has not been your recent experience.

Do keep in touch. Mark and I will not always be able to reply personally, but we will make sure you get a full reply. Our focus remains on driving down delays, especially on the Oxford route.

Best wishes
Sue