The Transport Minister expressed “serious concerns” about rail operator CrossCountry and threatened action if the situation did not improve.

In a scathing letter to the railway company’s interim directors on Friday, Louise Haigh said she had “reluctantly” agreed to Application for temporary restriction of benefits.

CrossCountry said the timetable cuts were necessary to help it catch up on a backlog of driver training, which had been exacerbated by recent industrial action.

The operator acknowledged the poor service in a statement and apologized for the inconvenience caused by the new timetable, saying it would lead to a more reliable service.

The operator announced the slimmed down timetablewhich will run for three months, from August 10 to November 9, in July.

Criticising CrossCountry, Ms Haigh said passengers had “suffered from a substandard service for too long”.

“Over the past year, the number of train cancellations in your company has increased significantly and, according to your own forecasts, you expect that you will not meet your contractual cancellation targets in the coming months,” she said.

Ms Haigh said this was unacceptable and the temporarily reduced timetable was not a satisfactory solution.

“Simply put, the only reason I accepted your proposal was to give passengers more certainty about what services are being offered,” Ms Haigh said.

The Transport Secretary said a recovery plan had been put in place for CrossCountry to officially ensure that the rail operator was working to improve its service, while preventing the company from profiting by cutting its services.

“If you fail to deliver the recovery plan, I will not hesitate to take further steps,” Ms Haigh said.

In a statement to the PA news agency, CrossCountry admitted that “the service has fallen below the standard our passengers should expect from us”.

“Far too often, our passengers have been inconvenienced by same-day cancellations, resulting in poor quality and reliability of service,” it said.

The statement apologised for any inconvenience caused by the provisional timetable and said the re-routing of trains would ensure that “97 per cent of our normal daily seating capacity” could continue to operate.

“By the end of the provisional timetable, we will have more fully trained drivers able to work across the network,” the statement said.

The CrossCountry network extends to major cities across England and into Scotland.

The operator’s services connect most of the UK’s largest cities, including Birmingham, Edinburgh, Bristol, Cardiff, Leeds, Sheffield, Nottingham, Newcastle and Manchester.

The Labour government has announced plans to nationalise almost all passenger rail services as existing private contracts expire.

She introduced the Rail Passenger Services (Publicly Owned) Bill within her first month in office, before MPs left Parliament for the summer recess.

The contract with CrossCountry, agreed by the previous Conservative government, began in October last year and expires on October 12, 2031.