Delay Repay | Great Western Railway

If you arrive at your destination 15 or more minutes late because your GWR train was delayed or cancelled, you can claim Delay Repay compensation.

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How Delay Repay works

How much you get will depend on the type of ticket you have and how late you arrived at your destination.

Pay out rates
Length of delay	Compensation
Length of delay	Single tickets	Return tickets	Season tickets (% cost of a return journey)*
15 - 29 minutes	25%	12.5%	12.5%
30 - 59 minutes	50%	25%	25%
60 - 119 minutes	100%	50%	50%
Over 120 minutes	100%	100%	100%

*How we work out the cost of a return journey:

weekly ticket: 1/5 of the ticket price
flexi season ticket: 1/8 of the price
monthly ticket: 1/20 of the ticket price
annual ticket: 1/232 of the ticket price

If you have a carnet or rover ticket, we divide the price you paid by the number of days it is valid for to give a daily return rate.

Delay Repay calculator

See how much you could claim back with Delay Repay. We can pay by bank transfer, debit/credit card, cheque, voucher, or donation to charity.

Delay Repay Calculator

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How to claim Delay Repay

We need to receive your claim within 28 days of your delay. Make sure you include a clear copy of your ticket or Smartcard:

the quickest and easiest way is to claim online
download a paper form (PDF, 491 KB)*
or pick up a form from any of our staffed stations*

*we can only pay by cheque, voucher, or charity donation for paper claims.

Automatic Delay Repay notifications

If you buy an Advance ticket on GWR.com, or travel with a GWR smartcard using pay-as-you-go (PAYG) or a season ticket, then we can tell you when you are delayed and owed compensation.

Advance tickets

You can opt in to receiving Automatic Delay Repay notifications if you have an Advance ticket bought from GWR.com.

If we find a delay of 15 minutes or more on your booked journey, we will automatically notify you that you may be owed Delay Repay compensation. You will have the opportunity to review the information and accept, amend, or reject the claim.

If you were delayed whilst travelling with a different train operator, we will still send you a notification, but you will need to claim for Delay Repay directly from them.
Pay-as-you-go (PAYG) in the Bristol area

You can opt in to receiving Automatic Delay Repay notifications if you travel with a GWR touch smartcard using pay-as-you-go (PAYG) in the Bristol area.

At the end of the day, we analyse all your entry and exit taps to work out the journeys you made and the most appropriate fares.

We compare how long it took you to complete your journey based on your tap activity, against how long your journey should have taken based on the scheduled timetable. Where there is a discrepancy, we look to see if there were any corresponding service disruption, and if we find a delay of 15 minutes or more, a claim will be created.

You will have the opportunity to review the information and accept, amend, or reject the claim.

If you have not tapped in or out or have had to change your tap-in or tap-out location, we will not be able to send you an automatic notification. Don’t worry, you can still make a manual claim for Delay Repay here.
Weekly, monthly, annual and flexi season tickets

When you tap in and out using your season ticket on a GWR smartcard (purchased on GWR.com), we can compare how long your journey took against how long it should have taken based on the scheduled timetable. Where there is a discrepancy, we look to see if there were any corresponding service disruption, and if we find a delay of 15 minutes or more, a claim will be created.

You will have the opportunity to review the information and accept, amend, or reject the claim.

If you have not tapped in or out, or have had to change your tap-in or tap-out location, we will not be able to send you an automatic notification. Don’t worry, you can still make a manual claim for Delay Repay here.

Delay Repay performance

Period	Volume of claims received	% of claims approved	Total value of compensation paid per period	Average time for a claim to be processed (days)
Period 1 01/04/22 to 30/04/22	36,646	82%	£751,530	2.7
Period 2 01/05/22 to 28/05/22	27,788	84%	£539,818	2.3
Period 3 29/05/22 to 25/06/22	44,961	84%	£949,729	2.5
Period 4 26/06/22 to 23/07/22	63,174	82%	£1,191,485	3.1
Period 5 24/07/22 to 20/08/22	74,256	88%	£1,085,510	3.9
Period 6 21/08/22 to 17/09/22	45,934	84%	£1,411,612	4.2
Period 7 18/09/22 to 15/10/22	61,845	84%	£1,677,819	3.1
Period 8 16/10/22 to 12/11/22	53,657	84%	£913,933	2.7
Period 9 13/11/22 to 10/12/22	83,892	83%	£1,238,993	2.6
Period 10 11/12/22 to 07/01/23	64,133	86%	£1,425,445	3.6
Period 11 08/01/23 to 04/02/23	72,126	85%	£1,421,369	3.6
Period 12 05/02/23 to 04/03/23	56,190	82%	£992,458	2.8

Frequently asked questions

What information do I have to provide?
To handle your Delay Repay claim we'll need:
- your contact details
- a copy of your ticket or proof of purchase
- details of your journey, along with the origin and destination station, scheduled departure time, and how late you arrived at your final destination
We’ll also need to know how you would like to be paid (bank transfer, debit/credit card, cheque, voucher, or donation to charity)
What proof of purchase do I need to submit?

This will depend on your ticket.
Paper ticket
An image or scan of your paper ticket. If you no longer have your ticket, we will accept a receipt so long as we can identify the journey details, ticket type, the price you paid, and the ticket number

GWR Touch Smartcard
An image or scan of your smartcard, as long as we can see the unique reference number

eTicket
A screenshot of your eTicket or a scan of your booking receipt, showing your booking reference, journey details and price you paid

Oyster card
A copy of your Oyster card statement showing the disrupted journey, the stations where you touched in and out, and the cost of your journey

Contactless
An image or scan of your contactless statement showing the disrupted journey, the stations where you touched in and out, and the cost of your journey

Smartcard (other train company)
An image or scan of your receipt (or booking confirmation) showing details of the relevant ticket held on your smartcard and the cost of your ticket
I travelled with a group, do I need to claim for each ticket separately?

We know that it’s not always possible, or practical, to claim individually. For example, when you’ve travelled with children. Our online form lets you submit a claim for multiple passengers in one go.

Just upload a copy of all the tickets you are claiming for and let us know how much each of them cost.
How will I be paid?

We can pay by bank transfer, debit/credit card, cheque, or voucher*.

Or, you can donate your compensation to our chosen charity partner for Delay Repay, Action for Children

You won't be able to change the payment method once you've made your claim, so make sure you choose the right one for you.

* We can only pay by cheque, voucher, or charity donation for paper claims.
Can I claim compensation for other travel problems/additional losses?

Delay Repay only compensates for delays. What we pay will be based on the cost of your ticket.

If you think you are entitled to more, we will need details of your journey, a copy of your ticket, and proof of the extra costs you paid.

Get in touch with our Customer Support team.

You can't recover the same money twice. But you may be entitled to recover up to the price of your ticket if you can prove that a service has not been delivered with reasonable care and skill.

Read our Passenger’s Charter for more details.
Why was my claim rejected?
Claims can be declined for many reasons. We’ll explain this when we reply. Delay Repay can only deal with claims for delayed journeys. If you would like to claim for any other reason, please get in touch.

Get in touch with our Customer Support team

Common reasons for turning down a claim are:

Your claim was submitted outside of 28 days
Under our Passenger’s Charter and the National Rail Conditions of Travel, to qualify for compensation you must make the claim within 28 days of completing the relevant journey.

Your ticket was not valid for the journey you have claimed for

Proof of purchase provided is not acceptable
We couldn’t identify the journey details, ticket type, amount paid, and ticket number (for paper tickets)

We were unable to find a delay of 15 minutes or more
- you gave us details of the train you travelled on, rather than the one you planned to board
- there were planned engineering works in place which meant that the timetable was amended. Compensation is not usually offered during planned engineering
- the date of the journey was incorrectly entered
The delay occurred with a different train operator
We can only deal with claims which were initially caused by GWR. If we find that the delay was caused by a different train company, we will pass the claim to them and let you know.

We offer compensation to a maximum of a full day’s travel (pro-rata)
You can’t claim more than the amount you paid for the ticket. Further claims will be rejected if the full cost of a ticket has already been paid.

If you have more information to give us, need to change any details, or think we’ve made a mistake, you can appeal. Log in to your Delay Repay account or click on the link in the email we send you. We’ll look at your claim again and get back to you as soon as we can.

To find out more, visit our frequently asked questions.

Frequently asked questions

Still can't find what you are looking for? Take a look at our FAQs.

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Didn't travel?

Weren't able to complete your journey because of disruption? You can can claim a refund on unused tickets easily.

Find out more