Greater Anglia has won three awards for train performance at the Golden Whistles Awards 2023 – an annual event organised by Modern Railways magazine and the Chartered Institution of Rail Operators to celebrate excellence in UK railway operations.

The train operator won the award for Best London and South-East operator (for its commuter and regional services), Best Long-Distance operator (for its Norwich – Ipswich – Colchester – London intercity services) and Best Operational Performance (for minimising delays).

The company was the most successful train operator at this year’s awards. The haul of three awards represents Greater Anglia’s best ever results at the event.

The awards are based on operational results and statistics, so Greater Anglia believes that they reflect its sustained high levels of train performance over the last year.

Annual performance for 2022 for Greater Anglia overall was at 93.27% using the long standing public performance measure (PPM) which records train arrivals at destination within five minutes of schedule time (or ten minutes for intercity services) and at 92.79% on the more demanding “Time to 3 minutes” measure which records train arrivals at every station they serve within three minutes of their scheduled time.

The company claims that these results are at historically high levels and have been achieved despite the increasing challenges of severe weather (with the hottest summer yet in 2022 and more frequent damaging storms).

Localised results for 2022 included annual PPM results on the operator’s Norwich to London intercity route and its rural routes of over 94.0%, Great Eastern commuter routes at over 93% and West Anglia routes at just under 93.0%.

Individual route highlights included Norwich to Great Yarmouth at 97.9%, Norwich to Lowestoft at 96.9%, Norwich to Sheringham at 96.7%, London to Harwich at 95.9%, Ipswich to Felixstowe at 94.2%, and both the London to Chelmsford/Colchester/Clacton line and the Ipswich to Lowestoft line at 93.9%.

Greater Anglia argues that it has achieved these results due to several factors, including new trains (which accelerate quicker, brake quicker, are more reliable and enable better recovery from delays than the trains they replaced); a focus from teams across Greater Anglia on improving performance; and joint work between Greater Anglia and Network Rail to raise punctuality and reliability standards.

Greater Anglia is now frequently one of the top three best-performing operators in the UK, despite operating over what it describes as “one of the more complex and congested networks”.

Jamie Burles, Managing Director of Greater Anglia, said: “We’re really proud to have received three major awards at this year’s national Golden Whistles awards. It’s deserved recognition for our teams and the excellent performance being delivered across Greater Anglia over the past year. Customers consistently rate a punctual and reliable service as their key priority for rail travel, so we have been focusing relentlessly on meeting those expectations and, with the help of our new trains and targeted work by colleagues across our company, day in, day out, we have been delivering performance at the highest standards ever seen in our region, on an ongoing basis, for three years now.

“We pledged that with the help of our new trains we would transform the rail travel experience in East Anglia, both in terms of the on-train environment and performance standards. We’re achieving that aim and we are fully focused on maintaining and further improving service standards in the years ahead to deliver an even better, more consistent service.”