YORK’S flagship rail business East Coast has pledged “robust” action to improve punctuality after coming bottom of a league in April.

Figures from Network Rail showed 86.4 per cent of the recently nationalised company’s trains arrived within ten minutes of their scheduled time last month – down by 3.9 per cent on the same period last year and worse than all the other major operators.

But an East Coast spokesman said today services on the East Coast mainline route from York to London and Edinburgh had been disrupted by five separate incidents outside its control.

He said: “These included a fatality near Peterborough, a landslip south of Berwick-upon-Tweed, a fallen tree on the line near Durham, a points failure in north Northumberland and a breakdown of another operator’s train ahead of our services.

“So far in May, on days when we have not been affected by external factors, up to 97 per cent of East Coast trains have reached their destinations on time.”

But he said East Coast recognised it could do better. “Our train performance is not where we want it to be and we are working hard to improve it.

“We are working closely with Network Rail to deliver robust joint action plans to improve punctuality of our services.”

Across the country, the number of trains arriving on time hit a new record high in April, with 94 per cent of trains arriving punctually. Virgin Trains improved by 8.8 per cent to 89.1 per cent punctuality.

In this region, TransPennine Express, which runs trains from York to cities including Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool, saw punctuality drop by 0.4 per cent year on year to 94.5 per cent, and Northern, which runs trains from York to Harrogate and Selby, saw its figure also drop by 0.4 per cent to 93.5 per cent.

CrossCountry, which runs trains from York to cities including Birmingham and Bristol, suffered a 3.5 per cent drop to 87.8. Figures were not given for York-based Grand Central, which runs trains from York to London.