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The Office of Rail and Road has issued a warning to Network Rail over the level of performance in the North West and Central region. As a national average, Network Rail’s contribution to passenger train delay minutes was 58 per cent, a fall of 1.1 percentage points compared with the previous year. But performance in the north ‘remains a concern’, said the ORR, after performance in the area deteriorated in 2018 and failed to recover very much during 2019. As a result, the ORR said it is further investigating the detail of Network Rail’s recently initiated recovery plan and monitoring its effects. On the other hand, Network Rail has managed its best performance of the last five years in Wales and the West of England, and there has been a 24 per cent reduction in passenger train delay minutes attributed to Network Rail in Scotland. However, despite this, the ORR warned that NR ‘remains well below its punctuality targets for both ScotRail and Caledonian Sleeper’.