For the second year running, in 2021 Greater Anglia was the country’s most punctual long-distance train operator.

The introduction of a more-stringent punctuality measurement has been introduced that requires trains to arrive within 59 seconds of their scheduled time at every stop along their journey. On the Norwich – Ipswich – Colchester – London route, 77.05% of Greater Anglia’s Intercity services ran on time during 2021. That was 10% more than the next best performing operator, and is also a slight improvement to 2020 when Greater Anglia was also named most punctual long-distance operator.

The figures were announced by Modern Railways Magazine’s Fourth Friday Club and the Chartered Institution of Railway Operators at the industry ‘Golden Whistles’ awards held on Friday, 25th February, at the Marriott hotel in Grosvenor Square, London.

All UK train services were measured by the Chartered Institution of Railway Operators for the 12 months up to 12th December 2021. The figures were based on a moving annual average using industry data using the new ‘on time’ measurement where trains have to arrive within 59 seconds of their scheduled time, including at all intermediate stations on the journey, rather than just at the destination station.

The new ‘On Time’ assessment is gradually replacing the previous ‘Public Performance Measure’ (PPM), which considers a service to be on time if it arrives at its destination within 5 or 10 minutes of its scheduled time, depending on the route.

That is the punctuality measure defined in Greater Anglia’s current contract with the Department for Transport, and has been the standard national measure since regular rail performance results started being published in the 1990s. The rail industry is working towards using the ‘on time’ figure as the standard measurement.

In 2021, Greater Anglia achieved record-breaking PPM punctuality on all of its routes. With a figure of 94.81 per cent, that is the company’s best-ever annual average punctuality, and is an increase from 92.97% in 2020; Intercity trains reached an annual average punctuality of 94.82%, up from 91.56% in 2020 .

Greater Anglia’s Head of Performance and Planning, Keith Palmer, said: “Although there is more to do to continually improve our performance, this result is a reflection of the huge amount of hard work that has been put in from all at Greater Anglia, alongside our colleagues from Network Rail, to keep performance high.”

“Along with Network Rail, we’ve invested millions in reliability improvements across the entire network, and the continued roll-out of our fleet of brand new trains is helping to provide the consistent and improving levels of service that our customers expect.”

Philip Sherratt, Editor of Modern Railways magazine, commented: ‘Greater Anglia has demonstrated consistently strong performance by winning the Gold Whistle for best Long Distance operator for the second year in a row, and indeed it improved performance further over the last year. This is a testament to the hard work put in by so many across the company to maintain high standards.’