Why should you when you arrived 14 minutes earlier than you were scheduled too?
That's not a delay.
You weren't delayed so why would you be entitled to delay repay?
As has been pointed out, you were
not delayed, so Delay Repay does not apply.
Would you be able to claim the difference between the Gatwick Express fare and the southern/Thameslink fare?
Yes!
Your train was cancelled. Therefore Condition 26 (a) applies:
26. Refunds on tickets that have not been used
If you decide not to use a ticket (other than a Season Ticket - see Condition 36) to make all
or part of your intended journey, then:
(a) if the train you intended to use is cancelled, delayed or your reservation will not
be honoured, you decide not to travel and at that time you return the unused
ticket to any ticket office, the Train Company responsible for that ticket office will,
wherever possible, give you an immediate full refund as shown in Condition 27
Two things to note:
any ticket office and
wherever possible. This in practice means that many, many booking offices will refuse to refund a ticket that was not issued at their Window / Office / TOC. Regardless of where you bought it, Victoria ticket office (Govia Thameslink Railway) should have offered you a refund 'wherever possible'. The best advice I have is to politely request the refund explaining you were travelling on a now-cancelled train, and ask for a refund. If you get an excuse, ask if they are familiar with Condition 26. If this doesn't get you anywhere, ask why a refund is not possible and remember - no admin fees apply.
If you receive a refund, you can then purchase a cheaper valid ticket to complete your journey by an alternative service.
If you do not receive a refund, I would purchase my (cheaper) alternative ticket and travel with that, leaving the tickets for the cancelled train unused. I would, as soon as possible, write to the operator of the ticket office and explain what happened, requesting a refund (not vouchers, unless you're personally happy with them, Condition 27 applies). I would also feed back to them why the ticket office told me that it wasn't possible to do the refund in line with Condition 26(a) and ask for clarification on their policy on that.
However, I appreciate that this involves lending money to the train operator, so I can see why you'd be reluctant even though it has a solid outcome that's easy to fight for if they refuse - particularly as you had already paid the much higher fare beforehand!
As you are I would send all of the tickets you used to GTR with a written account of what happened - no Delay Repay forms. You could try to argue that you are due the difference in fares between the train you intended to travel on and the one you caught, but it's not an easy position to defend, even though it's clearly the sensible one. More likely you will receive a 'gesture of goodwill'.
Well depending what time your flight was im not sure you were forced to take the earlier service, if you waited for the 2100 then you would've had a valid claim
I disagree. There is a reasonable expectation for a passenger to mitigate their losses by not deliberately delaying their journey further. As the ticket is valid on the Southern service, a reasonable expectation is that they would use that. (If unsure of validity they could always ask staff).
If they weren't there in time for the earlier Southern service, the 2032 to Brighton would have had them at Gatwick at 2109, only 7 minutes later than the cancelled train.
So no Delay Repay in my view whatever they actually did, unless they were actively misinformed by staff.
Interesting points - not relevant to this particular case and we have already got
another thread discussing it without consensus.
My own view boils down to the fact that if the train is cancelled, the TOC has already failed to hold up their end of the bargain, so it'd be a bit rich of them to quiz in response to a claim exactly what happened and why the passenger was late. At the same time it's far from the spirit of the Delay Repay rules to cause yourself inconvenience and then be compensated for it. However, if someone does genuinely do that, then the TOC that caused the initial delay has no case for not paying compensation. Bringing it back to the OP they will not ask or know why you didn't use a Southern service if you put the claim in for half an hour's delay. By far the likeliest outcome is that they will pay it this time, but they may view it as suspicious. However, don't do that, because it's dishonest. What's more there's chance of additional compensation as a goodwill gesture by giving an
honest account. Premia work both ways.
The ticket you held is routed 'Any Permitted'. All trains on this route are now operated by the same Train Operating Company.