ScotRail has paid more almost £600,000 back to passengers due to complaints about delays and cancellations.

The franchise handed disgruntled customers more than £2000 a day on average between April and December last year.

ScotRail was widely criticised after continually missing its punctuality target throughout the year.

The figures were obtained by the Scottish Conservatives through a freedom of information request.

Scottish Conservative transport spokesman Liam Kerr said: "It's no surprise the bill has surpassed £500,000 for the last nine months when you consider the problems on our railways.

"As well as passengers, you have to feel for the staff, who are doing their best with no help from the Scottish Government, and they will be wondering how transport minister Humza Yousaf ever allowed it to get this bad."

A majority of the payments - £340,000 - were handed to customers due to train delays.

December proved to be the most expensive month for the franchise with £98,878 paid to 9224 claimants.

A ScotRail Alliance spokesman said: "We are completely supportive of 'delay repay' because it compensates passengers for delays and our performance improvement plan is all about making our service punctual and reliable.

"We will continue to encourage passengers who've been delayed to claim back the portion of their ticket price that is rightfully theirs and have made the claiming process simple and speedy.

"Due to the ongoing investment and improvement of the railway network across the country, there have been more delays than normal and we're compensating customers as a result."

A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: "We acknowledge that there have been issues in respect of ScotRail's performance which has fallen below the standards required by the franchise contract.

"However, ScotRail has developed and implemented a performance improvement plan and we are encouraged to see that performance in this period is significantly better than the last, and above the same period last year."