Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how long it took her Department to consider each application for a change to the national passenger rail timetable for December 2024; and what the average time was for her Department to determine the outcome of an application.

Operators need to agree their train service level plans and funding in advance of operation allowing enough time for consideration by the Department before they engage with Network Rail's timetable production process. Typically, this is done through an annual business plan cycle with submissions in December and approval in March. However, they can be done through the year and approval time depends on the scale of the change.