page_title: Great Western Railway (train operating company)
section_title: Punctuality
hierarchical_section_title: Great Western Railway (train operating company) / Performance / Punctuality
caption_attribution_description: English: Passengers pile onto First Great Western class 158 "Express Sprinter" DMU 158953's Cardiff Central service at Bristol Temple Meads.
context_page_description: Great Western Railway is a British train operating company owned by FirstGroup that operates the Greater Western railway franchise. It manages 197 stations and its trains call at over 270. GWR operates long-distance inter-city services along the Great Western Main Line to and from the West of England and South Wales, inter-city services from London to the West Country via the Reading–Taunton line and the Night Riviera sleeper service between London and Penzance. It also provides commuter and outer-suburban services from its London terminus at Paddington to West London, the Thames Valley region including parts of Berkshire, parts of Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire; and regional services throughout the West of England and South Wales to the South coast of England. GWR will also be providing and maintaining the new fleet for Heathrow Express from May 2020.
  The company began operating in February 1996 as Great Western Trains, as part of the privatisation of British Rail. In December 1998 it became First Great Western after FirstGroup bought out its partners' shares in Great Western Holdings.
context_section_description: In 2004–2005, 79.6% of trains arrived on time (defined as within 10 minutes of their scheduled arrival time). On 22 December 2006, the First Great Western InterCity service was declared the worst in Britain for delays, according to figures from the Office of Rail Regulation, with more than one in four trains running late. First was also the only train company to achieve a year-on-year fall in performance results.
  First Great Western admitted to misreporting the number of cancellations in the period from August to December 2007, revised figures showing the company to have breached the cancellation threshold in the franchise contract. Specifically the company was alleged to have deliberately cancelled trains on the day prior to service without the prior approval of the Department for Transport, and without recording these cancellations on their performance figures. The company was also accused of falsifying records in order to claim dispensation for large numbers of cancellations. First Great Western was named in a Passenger Focus survey as the worst train operating company for 2007.
  On 6 September 2007 FirstGroup announced changes to its management structure, apparently designed to strengthen the First Great Western commuter services. Anthony Smith, head of the rail users council Passenger Focus commented, "A fresh management approach is welcome. Clearly, looking at the passenger satisfaction scores for First Great Western, the train company and Network Rail have a lot to do. However, passengers will believe it when they see improvements."
  Some delays are attributable to Network Rail rather than the operator, as the Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) found in September 2007, when it remarked that the First Great Western service continued "to suffer from very high levels of delays attributed to Network Rail" and described Network Rail's performance as "exceptionally disappointing".
  By 2009, passenger satisfaction with First Great Western was described by Passenger Focus as having "significantly improved".
  The company is no longer the worst-performing UK rail operator, a title which it held for a long period. However, the Which? survey of rail passengers published in February 2013 showed the company scoring lowest of the larger operators with less than 40% satisfaction (Virgin, which topped the poll, managed 67%).
  The latest punctuality statistics to be released by Network Rail for period 7 of 2013/2014 were 89.3% PPM (Public Performance Measure) and a MAA (Moving Annual Average) of 88.8% for the 12 months up to 12 October 2013.
caption: GWR has some of the most overcrowded services on the network. Here, passengers at Bristol Temple Meads board a service for Cardiff Central.
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