Greater Anglia have been named as train operator of the year.

The company were recognised in the Rail Business Awards 2020 after judges praised them for continuing to innovate and improve, while also preparing for the arrival of new trains.

Last year, Greater Anglia carried out a number of improvements, including improving its delay repay compensation scheme to include all delays of 15 minutes and over.

Over 35,000 more trains arrived on time in 2019 compared to 2018. This led to some months of record-breaking performance, especially on the Great Eastern Main Line and Southend line, which saw four successive months of over 94.5 per cent of trains on time from March to June.

The company were also recognised for continuing to invest in stations, car parks and new services, and saw passenger numbers increase.

Greater Anglia launched further ticketing initiatives to make it easier for customers to buy season tickets on Smart Cards, developing the Greater Anglia app so season ticket holders can upload their season tickets onto their Smart Cards using their mobile phones.

Jamie Burles, Greater Anglia managing director, said: “To be named train operator of the year is a tremendous accolade and a credit to the hard work and determination of everyone in our team, across the whole of Greater Anglia, to make our service much better for our customers.

“We have seen our improvements in punctuality recognised across the industry and have been named most improved London and the South East operator for punctuality on our commuter lines in Essex and Hertfordshire. Customer satisfaction has also increased by 8% to 81%.

“We’ve replaced all the trains on our rural routes with high quality, state-of-the-art new trains, with more seats and a much better travelling environment which, as they bed in, are starting to improve our reliability, as well as our customers’ on-board experiences.

“We recognise, of course, that last year ended on a difficult note on our rural lines due to signalling issues and that punctuality is not consistently where we want it to be so far this year. We’re sorry for those occasions when we have let people down and we are determined to get performance back on track as soon as possible.

“We fully intend to live up to our new title of train operator of the year, to continue to improve our service to our customers, raising standards further and continuing the roll out of a complete fleet of new trains.”