SOUTH Western Railway is one of the UK's 'most hated' public transport providers, a new study claims.

The operator runs rail services from Weymouth to London Waterloo.

A spokesman for South Western Railway blamed "a very complex and congested network" for the negative feedback and said the company is making improvements.

The research, which was completed by Tempcover, looked at more than 3.2 million tweets discussing the UK’s biggest public transport operators.

According to Tempcover the conversations were split between positive and negative sentiment, giving a list of the UK’s most loved and hated public transport operators. South Western Railway was billed as fourth-worst.

A South Western Railway spokesman said: “With more than 200 million passenger journeys a year and almost half a million Twitter followers, it’s not surprising that we generate such a large number of tweets from our customers.

“We have a very complex and congested network, running almost 1,800 services a week. Therefore even seemingly minor incidents can have an implication elsewhere on the network and cause delays.

“We know we need to do more and we’re continuing to make improvements. Over the course of the franchise, we’ll introduce more refurbished and new trains to ensure better reliability and performance.

"These developments will hopefully reduce the number of negative tweets we receive.”

Here's the top five 'most hated' train operators based on Tweets:

1. Southern Rail – 72 per cent negative tweets

2. Great Northern – 71 per cent negative tweets

3. Thameslink – 70 per cent negative tweets

4. South Western Railway – 69 per cent negative tweets

5. Northern Rail – 64 per cent negative tweets

Here’s the top five 'most popular' train operators based on Tweets:

1. Caledonian Sleeper – 76 per cent positive tweets

2. London North Eastern Railway – 59 per cent positive tweets

3. Merseyrail – 53 per cent positive tweets

4. Virgin Trains – 51 per cent positive tweets

5. Grand Central Railway – 50 per cent positive tweets

Looking at bus companies, First comes out as the UK’s most 'hated', with 62 per cent of tweets about them being negative, according to Tempcover.

However First Wessex, Dorset and South Somerset did not receive enough mentions to feature in the study.

To view the full report visit https://www.tempcover.com/best-and-worst-public-transport-operators-in-britain