TRAIN company TransPennine Express has launched a new compensation scheme for passengers.

TransPennine Express (TPE) has announced that from Sunday, February 2 customers who are delayed by 15 minutes or more will be entitled to compensation.

Delay Repay 15 (DR15) is a further extension of the current Delay Repay compensation that customers receive, when their train is delayed by 30 minutes or more.

Customers who are delayed by 15 minutes or more will be able to claim back 25 per cent of their ticket price for a single ticket, 12.5 per cent of their ticket price for a return ticket and season ticket holders will also be able to claim compensation should their train be delayed.

Leo Goodwin, Managing Director for TransPennine Express, said: “The last few months have been difficult for customers, and I am truly sorry to anyone who has experienced disruption as a result of this. We have been working hard to stabilise services since the start of the year and performance has improved. We will be reintroducing a number of services throughout February that we temporarily removed from our Liverpool to Edinburgh route.

“Earlier this month, we launched a compensation scheme for season ticket holders affected and I’m pleased to also launch Delay Repay 15 for our customers so that they can be reimbursed when things don’t go to plan.

“Customers who board our services expect them to run on time and when things go wrong, and they get delayed, we believe they should be appropriately compensated.“

Rail Minister Chris Heaton-Harris said: “TransPennine Express’ performance in recent months has been unacceptable and we understand how deeply frustrating this is for passengers."

Last year The Press reported how passengers took to Twitter to vent their anger over the firm’s failure to run reliable services from Malton to York, and Thirsk to York.