Bad weather, broken down train, trespassers on the line: we’ve been affected by train problems over the years. But where in the county suffers these delays the most?

New figures published every month have revealed where commuters are most likely to face cancellations or delays to their journey. Davina Jethwa reports.

In a bid to start a “new era” of rebuilding trust with passengers, earlier this year the Department for Transport began publishing monthly performance data about thousands of stations.

These figures, published by the Office of Rail and Road (ORR), show the number of trains at each location which arrive within three minutes of their scheduled time, and how many are cancelled every four weeks.

These figures have revealed which stations in Kent are most likely to leave commuters waiting on the platform.

From January 5 until March 31, Higham, which forms part of the Thameslink line from Rainham to Luton, had the highester number with an average cancellation rate of just over 7%.

Joe Sefton uses the train to get to college, which he is often late for.

He said: “I find a way around it, but it's quite annoying - it [cancellations] happen about 45% of the time.”

The situation is also all too familiar for Ben Holmes, who travels from the station daily to get to work.

Typically, he gets the first train to get to his workplace for 7am, but it's the journey home that proves more troublesome.

He said: “You can end up sitting and waiting at Gravesend for a transfer for an hour or so.

“Sometimes they just say delayed, and then you've just got to go out and get like an Uber or something.

“It can be quite frustrating sometimes, it happens fairly often.

“Sometimes I come straight from Abbey Wood, or I come through Gravesend and then transfer there, but a lot of the time it will be because of a signal failure at Rainham or Strood or something like that.”

But, Ronnie Woods, who also takes the train from Higham for work has experienced different causes for cancellations.

He said: “It's quite frequently cancelled due to last-minute due to lack of staff, or due to problems of flooding or what have you.

“It's very hit and miss when it comes to getting trains here, especially if there's a cancellation last minute - it impacts the rest of my day because I'm late for work.

“I've got to inform my boss, but if I do have to call work, I can barely get a signal [in Higham]

“I sometimes have to get a lift from my dad if he's not walking the dog somewhere else without a phone signal.

“I’d have to wait for the next train, which can be up to an hour or an hour and a half.”

Higham is followed by Greenhithe, Northfleet, Swanscombe and Stone Crossing for the stations with the most aborted services - all of these form part of the same Thameslink line.

A spokesperson for the operator said: “We understand our service has sometimes not been good enough and we sincerely apologise.

“Passengers rightly expect trains to run as advertised, and we are working hard to address this along with our industry partners.

“The Thameslink network is one of the most complex in the country. We move millions of passengers each week from Peterborough all the way down to Brighton and across to Rainham.

“We interface with dozens of other routes and are the only mainline operator to run across central London.

“This means that any delay can cascade across the network, with trains arriving at their destinations much later, and drivers in the wrong place to make their next journey.

“Therefore, we sometimes have to make the decision to cancel services mid-trip or skip station stops, to restore the timetable and reduce knock-on delays.

“Recently, incidents on or near our lines have disrupted services, including a fire at Farringdon on 18 March, and people on the tracks on March 24 at St Pancras – a critical part of the network – and Erith.

“Additionally, we are recruiting nine per cent more Thameslink drivers to make our service more resilient.”

But, interestingly, the stations where passengers may experience big delays differ from those with the most cancellations.

Those with the worst rate for trains arriving within three minutes of their scheduled time were Hildenborough, Pluckley, Teynham, Tunbridge Wells and Canterbury East.

Many lines that travel through these are operated by Southeastern, which has welcomed the rail reforms.

Director of operations and safety, Scott Brightwell said: “We want to be transparent so customers can plan their journeys in confidence.

“We're really, really pleased to have low cancellation levels in comparison to the industry. As an example, in the last period, 98.5% of our trains operated.

“So, that's good, but we also always have room for improvement - we want people to be aware of how reliable our services are. People plan their lives around our timetable.

“Our timetable is our promise to customers, it's really important we're transparent of what is and isn't working and what we're doing about improving it.”

Southeastern bosses jointly reviews the company’s performance on a daily, weekly and monthly basis and forms a strategy on how improvements can be made.

It also publishes data on its website as well as information around the line of route, punctuality and reliability scores.

But Scott says some of the biggest reasons for service disruption are trespassers and extreme weather, which can be challenging. During the London Marathon weekend alone, it had 14 reports of people on the tracks.

He said: “This is a huge challenge for the railway because when people trespass, their lives are in danger.

“So, we have to stop the trains and turn off the electrical supply until we're absolutely sure that nobody is in an unsafe position.

“That has a huge knock-on impact, and that trend and trajectory has been getting worse for a number of years.

“We're working really closely with the British Transport Police and Network Rail, having joint plans as part of our tripartite agreement around what we can do to improve that.

“When we talk about weather and rain, for example, we are investing millions of pounds with Network Rail in the infrastructure to improve drainage in some key locations, and all of those in different areas have impacted how we've been able to deliver for passengers.

“Some of that will be around the location, so, for example, if there's flooding in a particular location, that won't affect all of our stations, but that would affect some.

“And, depending on that location, if you've got flooding that's impacting 10 or 15 stations on a line of route, then you would see peaks in the sort of poor performance and the cancellation levels in that particular area.”

As well as weather and trespassers, like cars, Scott says trains can also break down when old, prompting delays and cancellations.

While he apologised to those customers affected, and encouraged them to use delay repay - a service to claim back compensation when passengers are delayed by 15 minutes or more - the Southeastern boss said the operator is looking to make major improvements to increase its performance.

These include multi-million-pound investments into renewing signals and tracks across the network, drainage improvements, recruiting more staff, and have also recently opened a new response team depot at Robertsbridge, Sussex, to shorten reaction time to big incidents.

This year, there will also be a fleet of more modern trains, with some more Electrostar types on the Maidstone East line.

Scott said: “So there is lots of exciting stuff going on to try and continually improve the performance that customers receive from Southeastern.

“I would like to thank readers - one of the best things that I get every week is a summary of all of the praise that comes in, because when things do go wrong, our people can make a real difference.

“We've got some fantastic people in the rail industry, so to the customers that are sending praise in, I really want to say thanks because it means a lot to our people.

“That’s a good thing about Southeastern - it’s sort of family, and the people really do care about doing the best they can.”