Delay Repay

The amount of compensation paid is based on the cost of your ticket and the length of your delay.

The table below shows the amount of compensation available for each ticket type:

*How we work out the cost of a return journey on a season ticket?

• Weekly ticket: 1/5th of the ticket price
• Flexi Season ticket: 1/8th of the ticket price
• Monthly ticket: 1/20th of the ticket price
• Annual ticket 1/232nd of the ticket price

More information can be found in our Passenger Charter.

Claiming is simple:

• You can claim online. Once you’ve registered, we will remember your details, how you want to be paid and your season ticket details (if you have one). So, if you do need to claim again, it’ll be much quicker.
• Download a form (PDF, 131Kb) from this page and apply by post
• Collect a Delay Repay form from our stations and apply by post.

If you have never made a claim online before, you will need to register.

Having the information below to hand will make the process effortless and ensure you get the right amount of compensation.

Your ticket

We’ll need a few of the details from your paper ticket, eTicket or Touch Smartcard:

• A scan, photo or screenshot of your ticket including the barcode if travelling by eTicket.
• A scan of your Photocard (if a season ticket holder).
• eTicket receipt or booking confirmation, displaying your booking reference, journey details and price paid.
• Touch Smartcard number and the receipt or booking confirmation (remember you can sign up for Automated Delay Repay).
• A journey statement/receipt if you are an Oyster or contactless user, available from the TfL website.
• If you no longer have your ticket a receipt with your journey details, including price paid.

Remember, if you don’t have a scanner you can use your built-in phone or tablet camera to take a photo of your ticket or photocard. You can then make a claim for Delay Repay compensation straight from your smart device. Alternatively attach the photo to an email and send it to yourself. You should then be able to save the image to your computer.

Your journey information

You’ll have to tell us where you were travelling from and to and the time of your journey.

Your compensation

You can choose to be repaid by:

• Electronic bank transfer (BACS)
• Credit or debit card
• Cheque
• National Rail Vouchers (which can be used as payment or part payment towards any National Rail ticket, including season tickets).
• Donate your compensation to our chosen charity, Action for Children.

Our Delay Repay website is the most secure way for us to receive your payment details.

Remember if you apply by post you can only receive compensation in the form of National Rail Vouchers or a cheque.

We will process your claim within 20 days and pay your compensation back to you by your chosen method.

Our policy does not in any way limit or exclude your legal rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015.

Under the Consumer Rights Act, you may be able to claim extra compensation if you incur costs as a result of our failure to provide the expected service. If you think this applies to you, please get in touch with our Customer Services team and tell us what happened so we can look into it.

We look at each claim on a case-by-case basis and aim to get back to you within 20 working days.

For more information on the Consumer Rights Act and how it applies to the railway industry please see Consumer Rights Act Customer FAQs PDF from National Rail.

No, if you abandon your journey due to disruption, you should claim a refund for any unused part of your ticket and not Delay Repay.

You must claim for the refund within 28 days of the ticket's expiry date.

Details of how to claim your refund are shown below:

• For tickets purchased via southwesternrailway.com or our call centre, please claim online 
• Tickets purchased from a South Western Railway station, ticket office or from one of our ticket machines. This includes tickets for journeys not on South Western Railway but sold at one of our stations. Return your ticket to the ticket office where they will arrange your refund.
• Any ticket bought through another train company, Transport for London, a travel agent, or other source, you’ll need to claim a refund from them.

No, we cannot change the option you have chosen, so please make sure you select the right one for you when filling in your claim.

When your train is delayed by 15 minutes or more. A delayed train is usually when your train service is running behind the planned, advertised timetable. If we have introduced an emergency timetable, we’ll base your compensation on that. When determining how long the delay was, remember it is based on when you get to your destination and not when the train left.

Delay Repay compensation is based on the delay to your overall journey, so if a cancellation delays your overall journey by 15 minutes or more you will be entitled to Delay Repay compensation. We will base our assessment for your compensation on you catching the next available train - you can tell us if you weren't able to do this and we'll take that into account.

Auto Delay Repay only generates delay claims when you tap in and tap out, so if your train is cancelled and you haven't tapped in before that train's scheduled departure time, you'll need to make a manual claim. Please remember when making a manual claim to provide an image or scan of your smartcard ensuring we can see the unique reference number. For ALL season ticket claims a copy of your matching photocard is also required.

If you have more than one claim you must submit each claim individually on our Delay Repay website. However once registered we will store your details, repayment preferences and season ticket details to make each claim quicker. It also means we can offer you the full range of repayment options, including BACS transfer direct to your bank account.

Alternatively, you could submit all your claims in one go by letter. Remember you will need to ensure that you include all required information [please see claim form(PDF, 1.09Mb) for details]. The 28-day limit for claims will still apply and we can only send your compensation in the form of National Rail Vouchers or a cheque.

If you have lost your paper ticket, where possible we will accept either the white ticket receipt, purchase receipt, or collection receipt, so long as we are able to identify the ticket number.

For ALL season ticket claims a copy of your matching photocard is also required.

This will depend on the payment method you choose:

• Electronic bank transfer - Your payment should be with you within 5 working days after your claim has been approved.
• Credit or debit card – Your payment should be with you within 5 - 7 working days, after your claim has been approved.
• Cheque - This will be sent out to you in the post within 20 working days of your claim being approved.
• National Rail Vouchers – These will be sent out to you in the post within 20 working days of your claim being approved.
• Donation to our chosen charity, Action for Children will be sent within 20 working days of your claim being approved.
• If you have Tap2Go, claims may take longer to process because it takes up to 7 days to finalise the value of your ticket as it’s based on your actual travel.

If you're travelling with more than one train company and you experience a delay, you should make your claim for Delay Repay compensation from the company that caused the initial delay.

You should also make sure that you leave enough time to make your connections under normal circumstances. Compensation will only be paid for missed connections when enough time has been left and you hold a ticket that covers the entire journey. Our online journey planner can help you plan your journey.

If we introduce a temporary timetable (for example due to poor weather) any Delay Repay compensation will be based on that temporary timetable and not the original timetable.

When we plan engineering work the online journey planners are usually updated six weeks in advance. However, we recommend you check your journey just before travelling, as occasionally we may be required to implement engineering timetable changes at short notice.

The Delay Repay guarantee will be applied to the engineering work timetable.

Although our process is designed for the person who experienced the delay to make the claim, we do understand this isn’t always possible or practical, for example where a family or group are travelling together. In such instances we are happy for one person to submit claims for everyone who travelled.

If you do want to make a claim for a group, then please make sure that the ticket image you upload includes a copy of everyone's tickets - this means we can pay everyone's compensation. Please note that full compensation will be paid to the person who submits the claim.

Yes, but you will need to ensure that you include all required information [please see claim form (PDF, 1.09Mb) for details]. However, it is worth noting it will probably be quicker for you to create an online Delay Repay account and save your details and preferences with us. This means you will only need to provide your journey and ticket details. It also means we can offer you the full range of repayment options, including BACS transfer direct to your bank account.

The 28-day limit for claims will still apply. Remember if you apply by post you can only receive compensation in the form of National Rail Vouchers or a cheque.

Yes, if you’ve travelled on our services and your journey has been delayed by 15 minutes or more you can claim compensation.

If you are an Oyster season ticket holder you will need to provide a receipt showing the date of purchase, the price you paid, and the zones covered by your Oyster card.

If you use Oyster Pay As You Go, please provide an image or scan of your TfL registered Oyster card statement showing the disrupted journey, the stations where you touched in and out, and the cost of your journey.

If you are using Contactless Payment, please provide an image or scan of your TfL registered Contactless statement showing the disrupted journey, the stations where you touched in and out, and the cost of your journey. Please note, Images of debit/credit cards are not accepted.

You can get copies of these statements from Transport for London and remember to ensure the statement you provide shows the journeys you are claiming for.

Your claim may be declined for a few reasons and the specific reason will be detailed in our email response.

The most common reasons are:

• Your claim was submitted outside of 28 days
• You have provided incorrect journey information, for example the date or time you travelled
• The delay was less than 15 minutes
• The claim was a duplicate of one you've made before (for the same date/time)
• Your ticket had already been used for a claim
• Your claim was for a journey that wasn’t possible
• Your ticket was not valid for the journey you have claimed for – please check the details of your ticket
• The delay occurred with a different train operator. If this happens, we'll forward your claim to the train operator we believe is responsible for your delay
• You have exceeded the maximum compensation payable for a day’s travel**

**When a delay of 120 minutes or more occurs, the compensation calculation available to you is 100% of the cost of the delayed journey (whether you are a season ticket or daily ticket holder). As we provide the full cost of the ticket (or value of the day’s journey in the case of season ticket holders), compensation is capped at this level for the day.

If we have declined your claim, we will contact you by email to tell you why, sometimes this can be because your claim is missing important information.

If you think we’ve made a mistake you can appeal our decision.

Click on the link in the email we have sent you and follow the instructions.

Once we have received your appeal, we’ll look at your claim again and will get back to you as soon as we can.

Yes, you can donate to our chosen charity, Action for Children and the compensation will be sent within 20 working days of your claim being approved.

Action for Children believe every child should grow up safe and happy. They are a vital lifeline for vulnerable children and young people. They provide practical and emotional care and support ensuring their voices are heard and campaigning to bring lasting improvements to their lives.

Automated Delay Repay (ADR) is only available for customers who have added train tickets to a SWR Touch Smartcard (including Tap2Go) or have purchased an Advance ticket through our website and have signed up for ADR.

When you tap in and out on your rail journey, we’ll use those taps to assess if your journey has been delayed by 15 minutes or more, ADR will generate a claim and add it to your Delay Repay account.

A claim is usually raised within 3 days of your journey.

Once a claim has been raised, we will send you an email to tell you this.

You must then follow the instructions in the email to accept, decline or amend the claim within 14 days of the claim being generated.

Once you approve the claim you should receive your compensation within 10 working days.

Using ADR is simple:

• Create a Delay Repay account. Please note, the email address associated with your South Western Railway account & Delay Repay must be the same. So, if you already have an account with South Western Railway, please make sure you’re using the same email address when you set up your Delay Repay account.
• Select Automated Delay Repay in your account
• Set up your preferred payment method
• Set up your preferred journey

Remember to tap in and tap out whenever you travel, as ADR identifies if you were delayed and creates a claim on your behalf.

Claims will be set up in your Delay Repay account ready for you to approve via the ADR approval email.

We will send you an email to tell you the claim is ready for approval and simply select accept, amend [if you do not believe the claim is accurate] or decline.

Once you approve the claim you should receive your compensation within 20 working days depending on the payment method you choose.

• Electronic bank transfer - Your payment should be with you within 5 working days after you approve your claim.
• Credit or debit card – Your payment should be with you within 5 - 7 working days, after you approve your claim.
• Cheque - This will be sent out to you in the post within 20 working days of you approving your claim.
• National Rail Vouchers – These will be sent out to you in the post within 20 working days of you approving your claim.
• Donation to our chosen charity, Action for Children will be sent within 20 working days of you approving your claim.

Yes, without this information we will not be able to determine whether your journey was delayed.

If you break your journey, and the station you are breaking at has ticket gates, please make sure you touch out and back in on a gate smartcard reader.

Unfortunately, if you break your journey where there are no ticket gates you will need to submit a manual Delay Repay claim via the Delay Repay website.

Yes, ADR won’t work if you didn’t or couldn’t tap in and out, or if your journey was different to normal. You can always submit a manual claim via the Delay Repay website or complete and send us a Delay Repay form (PDF, 1.09Mb).

Don’t worry if you’re not sure either, as ADR can detect if you've made a claim for a journey and won’t then automatically raise one for you. Similarly, if you make a Delay Repay claim and ADR has already generated a claim, we will let you know.

If you didn’t or couldn’t tap in or out, you can always submit a manual claim via the Delay Repay website or complete and send us a Delay Repay form (PDF, 1.09Mb).

Don’t worry if you’re not sure either, as ADR can detect if you've made a claim for a journey and won’t then automatically raise one for you. Similarly, if you make a Delay Repay claim and ADR has already generated a claim, we will let you know.

Automated Delay Repay supports Tap2Go journeys, however it can take up to 7 days to finalise the value of your ticket as it’s based on your actual travel.

When an Auto Delay Repay claim is triggered you will receive an email from us explaining that we believe you have been delayed and are therefore entitled to compensation.

You will be invited to review and complete your claim, however the value of compensation will not be known until the ticket value is finalised.

This is the simplest way to receive Delay Repay compensation. It also saves you from having to fill out claims (or having to remember to do so).

ADR claims are generated within 3 working days of travel and once approved your compensation should arrive within 20 working days, depending on the payment method you choose:

• Electronic bank transfer - Your payment should be with you within 5 working day after you approve your claim.
• Credit or debit card – Your payment should be with you within 5 - 7 working days, after you approve your claim.
• Cheque - This will be sent out to you in the post within 20 working days of you approving your claim.
• National Rail Vouchers – These will be sent out to you in the post within 20 working days of you approving your claim.
• Donation to our chosen charity, Action for Children will be sent within 20 working days of you approving your claim.

If you believe the compensation amount is incorrect, you can amend the claim by following the instructions in the email we sent you. If you weren't delayed, you can decline the claim.