COMPENSATION paid to rail passengers on the flagship East Coast service through York has soared, according to official new figures.

The statistics, published by the Department for Transport, show that the combined total payout by state-run East Coast and its privatised successor Virgin East Coast in 2014/15 was £6.7 million.

The figure paid by the York-based firm, which operates services from York to cities including London, Newcastle and Edinburgh, soared to £10.8 million in 2015/16.

Northern Rail, also based in York and providing services including those on the York to Harrogate route, paid out £173,000 in 2015/16, but no comparable figure is available for the previous financial year.

First Transpennine Express, which runs services from York to cities including Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool, paid out £1.3 million in 2015/16, but again with no figure available for 2014/15.

CrossCountry, which runs services from York to cities including Birmingham and Bristol, paid £1.58 million in the last financial year, compared with £1.36 million in 2014/15.

The RMT union has claimed that the figures nationwide, with more than £44.9 million paid out by all the companies in 2015/16, showed that the private sector railway industry was ‘shelling out record amounts of compensation for increasingly failing services.’

A spokesman said: “With companies now being forced to tell customers how to claim for the appalling service they endure, passenger compensation is sky rocketing.”

He claimed Virgin East Coast had seen compensation rise since it took over from the public sector from £450,000 to £10.8 million.

York Press:

However, that figure failed to take into account the £6.25 million paid in 2014/15 by its predecessor, the nationalised East Coast business, which took the total for the year on the route to £6.7 million.

RMT general secretary Mick Cash, speaking of the general increase in compensation paid nationwide, claimed: “This is money that is being bled out of a failing and chaotic rail system that could be reinvested in services ‎if we didn’t have the fragmentation of privatisation.”

A Virgin East Coast spokesman said the increase in its compensation payments was not down to poorer performance.

“At Virgin trains, we believe everyone should be able to claim compensation where it is due and we do our best to make it as easy as possible to do that,” he said.

“We are proud that we have managed to help so many more customers get the money they are owed and will continue to look at ways to make this even easier.”