Problems went beyond GTR and Northern, with delays and cancellations on many services

More trains were cancelled or ran significantly late on Britain’s railways this summer than in any other summer in the past 20 years, official figures have shown.

Data published on Thursday showed the plunge in the reliability of rail services went far beyond the problems on Northern and Govia Thameslink Railway in the wake of the May timetabling fiasco.

Northern’s punctuality and reliability hit an all-time low for the July-September period, according to industry regulator the Office of Rail and Road, while GTR only performed worse in the summer of strikes in 2016.

But with hot weather contributing to the railway’s difficulties, punctuality plummeted on other train services. The regulator said that for the same period – the second quarter of the financial year – operators such as TransPennine Express, Greater Anglia and C2C recorded their worst performance. The performance of others, including Great Western, Chiltern, East Midlands Trains, London Overground, LNER and CrossCountry, was the worst for more than a decade. Open-access operators Hull Trains and Grand Central also hit new lows for delays and cancellations.

Almost one in 20 trains nationwide were cancelled or ran more than half an hour late between July and September, rising to one in 12 of all long-distance trains.

Over the past 12 months, only four in five of all long-distance trains arrived at their destination less than 10 minutes late. The “moving annual average”, an industry measure recording punctuality across all rail services over the past 12 months, is at its lowest since 2005.

The industry body, the Rail Delivery Group, on Thursday issued a further apology for the services. Robert Nisbet, the regional director, said: “Every minute counts for our customers and we apologise to them for the unacceptable disruption over the summer.

“We have one of the most congested railways in Europe and this summer it has been stretched by an unprecedented heatwave and, in some parts of the country, the introduction of the May timetable.”

He said the industry was “working hard to learn the lessons from May” before another new timetable is introduced on Sunday. Relatively few alterations will be made to schedules this time, although from Monday around 190 daily services will be added to GTR’s timetable. These trains had been due to be introduced in May.

The poor performance, and concerns that the franchising system is in danger of collapse as train operators struggle with falling revenue, has led the government to commission a sweeping rail review. Its chair, former British Airways chief executive Keith Williams, launched the process on Thursday with a call for evidence from passengers and businesses around the country.