POOR punctuality affecting trains on the Cotswold Line through West Oxfordshire Oxford and London came in for criticism at the annual meeting of the route’s passenger group.

John Ellis, the chairman of the Cotswold Line Promotion Group, also criticised poor provision of information to passengers during disruption.

Addressing group members and Mark Hopwood, the managing director of train operator First Great Western, who was a guest speaker at the event held on Saturday at Moreton-in-Marsh, Mr Ellis said: “Performance through the year has been mixed, to say the least. Both the weather and the improvement work at Reading at Easter have contributed to some bad days, or even series of days.

“However, in addition, there are still far too many infrastructure, fleet and train crew failures, which have brought delays and changed – ie poorer quality – rolling stock on to our line.”

Criticising “inadequate customer information when delays, cancellations and changes in rolling stock occur”, he added: “It is a subject that we continually bring to the attention of FGW, but the situation does not improve.

“It really does seem to us that the controllers in Swindon do not understand the special circumstances of our line when they are making decisions.”

He repeated the group’s longstanding call for a regular hourly off-peak service on the route, which serves Hanborough, Charlbury, the Wychwoods and Kingham, and improved journey times, noting that many journeys now took longer than in 2004.

Mr Hopwood said that delays to Cotswold Line services were often caused by problems between Oxford and London but that he expected to see “a significant improvement in performance as we start to see the benefits of infrastructure improvements in the Reading area”.

He added that there had been a marked improvement in overall punctuality in the past month and that the reliability of the Class 180 Adelante trains reintroduced last year had improved rapidly thanks to a new maintenance regime introduced earlier this year, while timetable changes in September and December would also help.

Mr Hopwood added: “I recognise the aspiration for an hourly off-peak service. We are already running a lot more trains than we are required to by our franchise agreement.

“I would need one extra train at the Worcester end of the line each morning to operate hourly through the day but it is very difficult to take a train away from the London end of the route, due to the demand there.”