Northern: Cancellations rise as train company’s profit grows
Government-owned train company Northern cancelled more services as its profit rose during its latest financial year, it has been revealed.
The number of trains cancelled by the business increased from 7.2 per cent to eight per cent in the 12 months to 31 March, 2025, new accounts filed with Companies House show.
The rise in cancellations came as the firm’s pre-tax profit also increased from £8.7m to £10.8m.
Its total revenue grew from £1.07bn to £1.1bn while its passenger revenue rose from £359.7m to £395.5m.
The amount Northern received from the Department for Transport also went up in the year from £648.4m to £672.5m
York-headquartered Northern said its government subsidy had increased because of the impact of pay rises, indexation and higher energy costs.
The percentage of trains arriving within three minutes of when they should fell by 0.4 per cent to 78.7 per cent while the proportion of trains arriving within 15 minutes nudged up by 0.1 per cent to 97.7 per cent.
Sunday travel in the North West the most hit
Northern said: “[Our] trains service performance hasn’t been where we would like it to be this year and we recognise the impact this had had on our customers travelling across the north of England.
“The main causes of cancellations and delays were train crew, unavailability, infrastructure issues, external incidents such as trespass and vandalism and extreme weather events resulting in route closures.
“Although we entered a period of stability towards the end of the year with some of the best performance seen in months, the impact of train performance across the whole year for some customers was significant, particularly for customers traveling on Sundays in the North West.
“Conversely, some stations and routes have seen good and even excellent levels of service at times – with the challenge now to ensure consistency.”
Northern said it is aiming to bring the percentage of cancellations down to two per cent and have 90 per cent of arrive within three minutes by the end of 2027.
The company said: “This level of performance would be industry leading and requires a fundamental shift in the way [we] operate and deliver train services.”
Northern says managing costs ‘of prime importance’
Northern added: “As with the rest of the rail industry, the high inflation environment due to global events such as the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East over recent years has put a significant focus on our cost base and level of subsidy required to operate our services across the North.
“Managing our cost base efficiently to deliver the service promise to our customers is of prime importance.
“The challenge of industrial action that we saw in the prior year continued into this reporting period with strikes and action short of strike, such as a ban on working non-contractual overtime called by the trade unions.
“Inevitably this led to disruption for our customers during those times.
“There was much less disruption in this year with the national pay dispute being resolved during the year with all backpay settled at five per cent for 2022/23, 4.75 per cent for 2023/24 and 4.5 per cent for 2024.25.”
TransPennine Express profit dips
The results have been filed at the same time as fellow DfT-owned TransPennine Express.
The Manchester-headquartered company’s total revenue increased from £387.8m to £465.5m in the year to 31 March, 2025, while its passenger revenue also rose from £198.2m to £283.7m.
During the first full year under DfT ownership, its subsidy from the government fell from £174.5m to £165.2m while its pre-tax profit also decreased from £2.9m to £1.9m.
The percentage of trains arriving within three minutes of when they should increased by 0.9 per cent to 68.8 per cent.
The proportion of trains arriving within 15 minutes also rose by 0.8 per cent to 95.2 per cent while cancellations dipped from 4.8 per cent to 4.2 per cent.