Strike action: impact on rail service levels
Published 11 February 2026
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The Department for Transport (DfT) has estimated the effect that national strike action had on rail services between 2022 and 2024. This document explains the basis for the calculations.
According to DfT analysis, the total proportion of rail services lost due to cancellations and strikes since the start of financial year ending (FYE) 2026 has more than halved compared with FYE 2023.
Estimating extent of service reduction
To estimate the proportion of services lost to national strike action we:
- extracted the number of national strike days across Great Britain and the average percentage reduction in service level on those days from published Office of Rail and Road (ORR) service level data
- multiplied the average percentage reduction per strike day by the number of strike days in each year
- divided by the total number of days in the financial years ending 2023 and 2024
This provided an estimate of the annual average reduction in services attributable to national strike action.
From this, it was concluded that national rail strikes contributed a reduction in services of approximately:
- 5% in FYE 2023
- 3% in FYE 2024
This result was then compared to official statistics published by ORR which indicate a cancellation score of 4% in Great Britain in the years since FYE 2023 (see Table 1).
Table 1: ‘On the day’ cancellation scores, Great Britain
| Timescale | Cancellation score |
|---|---|
| FYE 2023 | 3.8% |
| FYE 2024 | 3.8% |
| FYE 2025 | 4.1% |
| Year ending 3 January 2026 (Moving monthly average rail period 10 2025/26) |
3.6% |
Source: ORR, Table 3124, Monthly Moving Average cancellation score
The estimate of days lost to service reductions during strikes is additional to the cancellations reported by the ORR. This is because services are typically removed from the timetable in anticipation of strike action when a strike is announced – days or weeks in advance of the strike.
In contrast, the official cancellations score is a measure of ‘on the day’ cancellations comparing trains run against the timetable as it was settled at 10pm on the previous day. The official cancellation score is therefore based upon the reduced timetable planned for strike days, rather than the original full timetable, and does not recognise any services removed from the timetable before 10pm the previous day.
The total estimated share of services lost from the timetable due to strikes in FYE 2023 (around 5% of services) is a similar scale to the cancellations score, which has remained around 4% from FYE 2023 onwards. There has been no national strike action since April 2024.
Therefore, this analysis concludes that the total proportion of rail services lost due to national strikes and cancellations has broadly halved compared with FYE 2023.
Notes and definitions
These calculations account for services lost due to national strike days only, and do not include localised strike action or action short of strike. They also exclude planned service level reductions on days either side of strike days.
They do not account for variations in service level by day of the week. Saturdays are overrepresented within national strike days in FYE 2023. While fewer trains are run on Saturdays compared with weekdays, this is not expected to materially impact the findings of this analysis. No strikes were held on Sundays in FYE 2023 and only one took place in FYE 2024.
They do not account for any other revisions to the timetable used to measure cancellations against. Operational data on resource availability shortage pre-cancellations are published by the ORR but do not fully cover the period during which strike action took place. These pre-cancellations accounted for around 0 to 1% of services during FYE 2024. The latest data from ORR shows a decline in the resource availability shortage pre-cancellations.
The calculations estimate the annual average impact. In practice the impact of strikes is concentrated on specific strike days so may not represent day-to-day experience of service impacts when travelling.
Data used for this analysis
There are several different measures of the operational performance of the railway.
This analysis uses data from ORR on the estimated percentage of trains planned on national strike days between April 2022 and March 2024, compared to regular levels of service. The data is presented at operator level and for Great Britain as a whole, which was used for this analysis.
The estimates for trains cancelled or part-cancelled are taken from ORR Table 3124 on cancellations, using the moving annual average cancellation score figures.
The cancellation score measures the number of trains that are cancelled as a percentage of trains planned. This would include trains missing stations or not reaching their destination. The cancellations measure is a score which weights full cancellations as one and part cancellations as half.
Contact information
For more information, contact the rail stats team: rail.stats@dft.gov.uk