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Notes to editors

1. East Coast services were disrupted over the last four week period owing to external factors outside the train operator’s control. A fault with an overhead power line on 3 April resulted in 16 East Coast services being cancelled. There were two incidents of other train operators with broken down trains which caused 23 services to be cancelled and substantial delays. In addition, East Coast’s performance was also heavily affected over the past four weeks as a result of ten fatalities on the route, which led to delays and 25 train services being cancelled
2. Arrived on time - the measure of train punctuality also known as PPM (public performance measure) means trains arriving at their destinations within five minutes for commuter services and within 10 minutes for long distance services. This measure of punctuality is commonly used throughout Europe. Heathrow Express, Grand Central, Hull Trains and Eurostar are not included in the National PPM
3. National train punctuality is measured for all trains across the whole network, including cancelled services and delays caused by external factors (such as vandalism, extreme weather, suicides etc). Punctuality did not start to be recorded in this vigorous and thorough way until 1997. Before then Railtrack, and BR before it, did not measure all services and also excluded external factors and other items from their numbers
4. These figures represent provisional data for the period and individual operators' performance data may vary slightly from the full period performance report that Network Rail publishes on its website every month