It’s not just pubs and restaurants that have to obey the government’s new 10pm curfew - Greater Anglia is having to close its buffets early on InterCity trains between East Anglia and London.

In line with other hospitality venues, café bar services - as they are now known - must close between 10pm and 5am. So there will be no buffets on the 7pm, 8pm and 9pm services from Norwich to London Liverpool Street, nor the 9.30pm, 10.30pm and 11.30pm services from London Liverpool Street to Norwich.

The 8.30pm service from London Liverpool Street to Norwich will have a catering service as far as Stowmarket.

Michael Wyatt from Greater Anglia said: “The evening services out of Norwich are still seeing very few passengers and on some of them we would be unable to provide a service for the entire journey because of the 10pm cut off, so for simplicity we have decided to temporarily suspend these services while the restrictions are in place.

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“Our teams will instead be assisting the business by carrying out passenger counts so that we can continue to advise customers on the less busy trains via our website, and they will be doing additional cleaning around the station to help keep everyone safe.”

Despite the restrictions and fewer passengers, Greater Anglia’s catering team aims to continue to provide an excellent service for customers, introducing a Hot Drink Loyalty Scheme with every fifth drink free, and the chance to win a Lavazza coffee machine in December.

Staff are undertaking additional cleaning at the café bar and have been issued with hand sanitiser for themselves and customers. Contactless payment is encouraged and social distancing signage has been installed to help passengers keep apart and protect staff.

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It is mandatory for customers to wear a face covering when using public transport, to help reduce the spread of Covid-19. Children under the age of 11 and people with a disability or illness which means they cannot wear a face covering are exempt from wearing them.

The train operator has also introduced a wide range of measures to make it easier for customers to maintain social distancing at stations and on trains - including floor markings, one-way systems, new signs and queuing systems.