AN MP has criticised a rail company after a only a third of its trains arrived at a town's stations on time.

The figures, released by MP Harriett Baldwin and the Department of Transport show that just 35 per cent of trains run by West Midlands Trains are arriving at Great Malvern and Malvern Link stations when they should.

She has called on them to make changes urgently.

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She said: “I welcome any measures which will see the improvement in rail performance for local commuters and it is unequivocally clear that performance has been poor in recent months.

“Managers took the decision to remove carriages from the service between Hereford and Birmingham to help other franchises and that led to crowded trains and unhappy customers.

“The statistics show that the service runs poorly and is getting worse. I hope that West Midlands Trains will get an urgent grip on this problem and halt the decline.”

Mrs Baldwin said she has spoken with the Department for Transport on the franchise’s performance and rail minister Chris Heaton-Harris confirmed that trains are currently arriving as scheduled at the two Malvern stations just 35.04 per cent of the time – down 3.89 per cent.

West Midlands Railway said the performance drop figure relates to a comparison of the six months from December 2018 to May 2019 (38.93 per cent right time arrivals at Great Malvern) with the six months from May 2019-Dec 2019 (35.04 per cent).

Figures since the December 2019 timetable change are not yet available.

Richard Brooks, customer experience director for West Midlands Railway, said: “We fully accept that the May 2019 timetable change did not work as intended, performance suffered as a result and we have apologised to customers.

“We have since introduced more carriages on the line serving Great Malvern as well as simplifying our timetable to help us run a more reliable service. We have also discounted season tickets while we improve our performance.

“In the first week of 2020 we saw 28 per cent more services across the West Midlands arriving on time when compared with the last week of the previous timetable, which demonstrates welcome early improvement.” Last week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned WMR could lose its franchise amid repeated poor performance.