Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the systems in place to refund rail season tickets.

The Department and Transport Focus are in regular contact with the rail industry to monitor the effectiveness of the systems in place to refund rail season tickets. This has led to the introduction of new processes to make claiming refunds easier during this crisis.

Passengers are now able to claim refunds remotely and we have allowed passengers to backdate their season ticket refund claim to 17th March, when ‘do not travel’ advice was first introduced. The refund acceptance period for passengers has also been extended to 56 days, and a season ticket refund calculator has been added to National Rail’s website.

Train operators have allocated additional resources to process the unprecedented number of refund requests as quickly as possible. Since 17th March over 85,000 season ticket holders have claimed season ticket refunds totalling over £130 million in response to COVID-19 travel restrictions.