Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of the rules on refunding rail season tickets as a result of the covid-19 outbreak.

Following the introduction of COVID-19 travel restrictions in March, the Department introduced a number of temporary process changes to make it easier for passengers to claim refunds, including allowing season ticket holders to backdate their refund claim by up to 56 days, or the date their ticket was last used, whichever was later. In addition, new arrangements were put in place to enable season ticket holders to claim refunds remotely, and a season ticket refund calculator was added to National Rail and all train operator websites. The Department agreed with train operators that they would revert to the standard refund terms and conditions from 7 September 2020, but passengers can continue to claim refunds on unused portions of season tickets.

Train operators allocated additional resources to process the unprecedented number of refund requests as quickly as possible. Since 17 March over 220,000 season ticket holders have claimed season ticket refunds totalling over £340 million in response to COVID-19 travel restrictions.