Train companies
Northern Delay Repay on short commuter journeys
Independent site, not a train company or claims service. You claim only through your operator’s own form.
The calculator above already uses the Northern scale: enter what you paid and how late you arrived to see the band, the amount and your last day to claim.
Northern would pay
£3.70
25% of the single fare paid
| Scheme | Delay Repay 15, from 15 min |
| Band applied | 15–29 min |
| From 30 min late | £7.40 |
| Claim by | 23 November 2026 (28 days left) |
Estimate from the scheme Northern publishes, read on 26 October 2026. The operator checks the train you were on and decides the claim.
Northern runs local and regional trains across the north of England, where many fares are short and cheap, and that is exactly why its Delay Repay 15 scheme is worth knowing. A train that reaches your destination 15 minutes late already pays 25% of a single: on a £14.80 ticket and a 19-minute delay that is £3.70. From 30 minutes the share rises to 50%, and from 60 minutes the whole single comes back. Returns are split in two, each late leg counting for half the fare, and season tickets are valued per journey. You have 28 days from the journey to claim, online, on a paper form from a staffed station or by post. In April 2025 to March 2026, Northern received 536,323 claims and approved 75.4% of the 534,921 it closed. One limit applies to what we read: its live pages refused automated reading, so the bands come from archived copies of its official pages.
Every band for your fare
Northern, from
15 min
| 15–29 min | £10 |
| 30–59 min | £20 |
| 60–119 min | £40 |
| 120+ min | £40 |
Single tickets. Return: 12.5% / 25% / 50% / 100% of the return fare per late leg.
Schemes and rules read by Radif Partners · Editorial policy · Method
Small fares, same percentages
A large share of Northern journeys cost less than a long-distance fare by a wide margin. The percentages, however, are the same as on any Delay Repay 15 operator, so the money depends on the price you paid. The table uses a £14.80 single as an example.
| Arrived late by | Share of a single | On £14.80 | Share of a return, per leg |
|---|---|---|---|
| 15 to 29 | 25% | £3.70 | 12.5% |
| 30 to 59 | 50% | £7.40 | 25% |
| 60 to 119 | 100% | £14.80 | 50% |
| 120 or more | 100% | £14.80 | 100% |
A £24 return with a 35-minute delay on the way home earns £6, 25% of the ticket, because only one of its two halves was late. If both legs ran more than an hour late, the total is £24, which is the whole fare.
How an operator handles Delay Repay claims
Claims approved
75.4%
| Closed within 20 working days | 99.4% |
| Claims closed | 534,921 |
| Period | April 2025 to March 2026 |
Office of Rail and Road, Table 4410 (OGL v3.0). Where the ORR reports a group, the figure covers all its brands.
Season tickets and the Flexi Season
For a season, Northern values one journey by counting a working week of trips to and from your destination: 10 a week for a weekly season, 16 for a Flexi Season, 40 for a monthly and 464 a year for an annual. So a £68 weekly gives a journey value of £6.80, and a 40-minute delay on it pays £3.40. Each delayed journey is a separate claim with its own deadline.
One caution on seasons. The charter table, as extracted from the archived PDF, lists a season column and a Flexi column whose order could not be confirmed with certainty. The calculator applies the season shares that match the single column, capped at one journey from 120 minutes, which is the reading we consider most likely. If the figure you receive differs, the charter is the reference to quote.
How Northern pays and how fast
The online form lets you pick the payment. In our data the options are: card, rail travel vouchers, cashable voucher, charity donation. The archived claim page also mentioned payment to a UK bank account and a payment link through NatWest PayIt, plus a free ticket usable only on Northern trains. Some claims are started for you: advance tickets bought on its website or app by registered customers. Northern says it aims to review claims within five working days and sends a claim reference by email, which you should keep.
The Office of Rail and Road figures give a sense of the pace. Over April 2025 to March 2026, 99.4% of Northern claims were closed within 20 working days. For April 2026 to March 2027, the provisional count so far stands at 169,789 claims received with 73.7% approved (ORR Table 4410).
What we could and could not read
Northern's live website blocked automated reading. The bands, payment options and season rules here therefore come from an archived copy of its Delay Repay page and its Passengers’ Charter, both official documents but not the current versions. The scheme has been stable, yet a detail may have changed since. Northern is run by the government's operator of last resort, DfT Operator, and so is already in public ownership. Neighbouring routes are covered on our TransPennine Express page, and the 15-minute rule is explained in its own guide.