There were over two years worth of delays to Southern and Southwestern railway services run by National Rail during last year.

A Freedom of Information request revealed that there were 806 days (1,160,739 minutes) worth of delays between April 1, 2018 and January 17 on South Western services.

The same FOI revealed there were 693 days (997,538 minutes) worth of delays during the same period on Southern railway.

15 of these days were due to overrun planned works on South Western and 3 days on Southern railways services.

These facts come after a fee increase of 3.2 per cent at the start of the year.

Wimbledon Times:

Total delay in hours to Southern services.

Wimbledon Times:

Total delay in hours to Southern Western services.

Wimbledon Times:

Total delay in minutes to Southern services.

Wimbledon Times:

Total delay in minutes to Southern Western services.

Wimbledon Times:

Total delay in minutes, due to overrun planned works to Southern services.

Wimbledon Times:

Total delay in minutes, due to overrun planned works to Southern Western services.

Andy Wasley, who regularly rides with Southern, spoke of his bad experiences of the service.

He said: “The worst thing has to be, when it gets to a Friday all I want to do is get home and spend time with my husband.

“But without fail most of my trains from Victoria will be delayed and this really eats into time without from my family.

“The one million minutes of delays in the last year are impacting millions of people and this seems to get brushed under the carpet.

“Funnily enough on the day the train fares went up my train was delayed by 20 minutes, it was overcrowded and smelly, but until people speak out and protest against the price hikes, they will keep rising them and providing a poor service.”

According to Network Rail, on the south east route over the past 12 months, we had 4,175 separate railway possessions of which 57 overran and delayed trains – 98.6 per cent are completed on time.

A spokesperson from Network Rail coverage in Southwestern coverage area said: “We know train performance hasn’t been good enough for passengers on this route and we are working hard with our train operating companies, including South Western Railway, to improve it.

“Since November, this has seen an increased focus on improvements for passengers and an independent review on how we manage overrunning engineering work.

“This has all helped us reduce overrunning work by more than 50%.”

A Network Rail spokesperson, who covers Southern Rail services said: “Engineering works are absolutely critical to the operation of the railway, so it is always disappointing when works overrun and cause delays.

“We’re sorry for the disruption these have caused passengers. In the past three years, we have achieved a 64 per cent reduction in the number of delay minutes on Southern services, but we recognise more needs to be done and are constantly striving to improve to avoid overruns.