Rail company Greater Anglia has recorded the best punctuality figures on the region’s trains for nearly two decades.

During March 93% of the Intercity trains to London ran on time, and almost 95% of the suburban Great Eastern trains were on time.

The figures for the rural services were also good with Marks Tey to Sudbury being on time almost 96% of the time and Ipswich to Felixstowe on time 94% of the time. Trains on the East Suffolk Line were on time 92.5% of the time.

But trains between Ipswich and Cambridge or Peterborough were only on time less than 88% of the time.

Trains between Cambridge and Norwich, through Thetford and Brandon, were only on time 78% of the time – but Greater Anglia said this was because of engineering work by Network Rail which imposed speed restrictions. That had now been completed and trains were able to run at normal speed again.

Jay Thompson, Greater Anglia train service delivery director, said: “We’ve been working really hard to improve our performance, and it’s good to see that for the fourth railway performance period in a row punctuality has increased.

“We know how important it is to our customers that our trains run on time. Our focus now is to get a consistent level of service across the whole network – to get all our punctuality statistics into the 90s, or better, on all of our lines.

“We are carefully monitoring all of our services, looking at what causes every single minute of delays and how to prevent a similar delay another time.

“We’re working closely with Network Rail to react faster when delays occur and to get services running back to normal as quickly as possible.”

Network Rail Anglia chief operating officer Steve Hooker said: “We introduced a new performance improvement campaign called Every Second Counts four months ago, which focuses on the top eight causes of delay, and put aside a £10m booster fund to tackle these key areas.

“The early results are promising, but we are not complacent and will continue to seek better ways to improve reliability for our passengers. Together with Greater Anglia, we’re working harder and in smarter ways to improve train punctuality and make journeys better for everyone.”