Promise to reduce town's train cancellations

Passenger Tessa Frith said Ledbury trains often appeared to be cancelled at the last minute

Rail companies are promising to improve reliability at a station where 7.5% of trains were cancelled over the last 12 months.

Ledbury had the highest rate of cancellations in the West Midlands and the 54th highest rate in the country.

West Midlands Railway said it was spending money on trains and infrastructure and training new drivers.

Great Western Railway said it was also working to reduce delays, but added that "smaller stations with fewer services will be disproportionately affected by this data".

Across England, about 3% of scheduled stops were cancelled in the year to August, according to Office of Rail and Road (ORR) figures analysed by BBC - roughly the same as the previous year.

The average for the West Midlands region was about 4%.

The worst-offending station, Ilfield in West Sussex, saw 10.4% of its trains cancelled in that period, although less-busy stations like Ilfield and Ledbury may see higher percentages of cancellations because they have fewer trains so their data is more volatile.

'Quite unreliable'

Passenger Tessa Frith said she used to use Ledbury station a lot when she worked in Hereford and still uses it occasionally.

She said the service there "can be quite unreliable" with trains appearing to be cancelled at the last minute.

She said: "I'll check the train time and then I turn up here and it will have changed... to cancelled."

Although she said she was glad of the railway and preferred to travel by train because of the comfort, it was "frustrating" to miss appointments.

West Midlands Railway said: "While the majority of our trains run on time, we recognise it is frustrating when services are cancelled and we are working hard to improve reliability at Ledbury."

It said it had spent £1bn on trains and maintenance facilities and that Network Rail had made improvements to the track earlier this year.

The company also said cancellations can occur for a wide variety of reasons, "including weather, trespass and infrastructure issues".

Great Western Railway said it only runs a maximum of four trains a day in each direction to Ledbury "and therefore has less influence on the overall station cancellation rate".

It said 96% of its services ran last year and that it would "continue to work with our industry partners Network Rail as we seek to continue to improve the reliability of our services and the infrastructure on which they depend".