The Office of Rail and Road has today published its first annual benchmarking report on train and station operators’ delivery of passenger assistance.
The findings highlight that while passengers are generally satisfied with the standard of assistance when it is delivered, delivery itself can be unreliable with 11% of passengers reporting that they received none of the assistance they booked in 2024/25.
ORR assessed 14 train operators plus Network Rail for their reliability of assistance delivery and for passenger satisfaction from 2022 to 2025 and Northern Rail recorded the lowest reliability score in the benchmarking assessment
In 2025 it implemented an improvement plan in response to concerns raised by ORR in 2024. In August 2025, in response to ORR’s new approach to monitoring training delivery, Northern reported that around 800 passenger-facing staff had not completed disability awareness training.
ORR has now opened a formal licence investigation to establish: i) how long Northern passenger-facing staff who had not received required training were interacting with disabled passengers; ii) the circumstances that led to this; iii) how Northern can provide assurance that its recent training has been effective and iv) ensure a similar situation will not arise in future.
