THE Government has announced a probe into South Western Railway’s performance, after nearly 7,000 people signed a petition calling for contracts to be terminated.

Transport secretary Chris Grayling said he was “very disappointed” with the franchise’s performance over recent months. He ordered an independent review of South Western Railway, to make sure “all possible steps are being taken to improve performance and passenger experience”.

The petition, which was this week swiftly approaching the 10,000 mark, required for a government response, highlights: “Since the takeover, the number of delays have increased, delays have got longer, and cancellations have increased.”

South Western Railway was awarded the franchise, previously run by South West Trains (SWT) last year, and took the reins in August.

Since then it has come under fire for its seemingly frequent delays. The review will also look into Network Rail, which Mr Grayling said was partly to blame.

In a letter to MPs, he explained: “I have been very disappointed with the performance of South Western Railway over recent months, and I know many of you have also been frustrated by the issues passengers have experienced.

“I am determined that we see a long-term, sustained performance improvement across this route.”

Last year the Department for Transport (DfT) said the new operators would oversee a £1.2billion investment to improve journeys for millions of train passengers and that the new franchise would add 22,000 extra seats into London Waterloo on every morning peak and 30,000 extra seats each evening peak.

Other improvements promised under the new contract were 35 additional weekday and Saturday services between Portsmouth, Southsea and London Waterloo, more Sunday services, refurbished trains, as well as live information on seating availability and crowding levels via a new mobile phone app.

In March 2017, Chris Grayling said in his report the new franchise would see “a closer partnership” working between track and train.

“A railway that is predominantly run by an integrated team of people with a commitment to the smooth operation of their routes, improving services and performance is at the heart of my vision for the network, and SWR expects to work even closer with Network Rail with the shared aim of giving passengers exactly that.

SWR is said to be spending a “substantial amount” of cash to improve reliability. However, a spokesman added that currently performance had “not been at the level we want, or expect, and we are determined to put that right”.

Almost half (45 per cent) of all SWR services have failed to turn up on time since the operator took over the franchise eight months ago.

It comes after the train operator’s latest customer report summary – covering the seven-month period since it took over the franchise from SWT, who held it for 20 years – revealed that just 83 per cent of trains met Network Rail’s “public performance measure”, arriving at their terminating station within five minutes for commuter services and within 10 minutes for long-distance services.

In addition, just 55 per cent of services arrived at the ‘right time,’ whereas six per cent were delayed by 15 minutes or more, thus qualifying for SWR’s “delay repay” scheme, and almost four per cent were cancelled entirely.

In a separate survey by the BBC published last week, SWR found to be the second worst culprit for missing scheduled stops at stations, with an average of 11-in-every-1,000 services missing stations.

Responding, the operator apologised to passengers for the delays, commenting that its recent performance levels “are not what you expect or deserve from us”.

But, deflecting the blame, it added that performance: “Has been in decline for a number of years” and said it is working with Network Rail, which manages the track and signalling infrastructure, to reduce the number of incidents and “recover more quickly when things do go wrong”.

The operator added: “We were disappointed but not surprised we didn’t meet some of our targets.

“The last few months have been a very challenging time, with a number of incidents which have caused major disruption to your journeys.”

Haslemere Rail Users Group has taken up its members concerns with SWR over poor performance.

Its secretary Martin Odell called the survey ‘grim reading,’ not only for the delays, but also for the delay compensation process applicable to standard and first class passengers.

In January, SWR increased rail fares by an average 3.3 per cent , the biggest rail fares increase since 2013.

An annual first-class season ticket from Liphook to Waterloo now costs £7,080, as compared to £6,836 last year, while a standard season ticket increased from £4,020 to £4,164, with monthly charges up from £386 to £399.

Outcomes of its timetable consultation, on proposals to deliver more and faster trains, have just been published and full timetables will be available later this year, as reported in The Herald last week.

The RMT union has announced strikes on May 11, 14, 16 and 18 in its long-running dispute over driver-only trains.