Standards have slumped on the busy Great Eastern railway, it was revealed today.

The company - which operates commuter services from Colchester, Clacton and Chelmsford to Liverpool Street - has been given a C grade in the performance figures published today after achieving a B last year.

The Office of Passenger Franchising report shows punctuality has suffered, although reliability is on a par with the last report.

The table shows that 99.6 per cent of the advertised trains ran, while 89.5 per cent arrived on time or within a five-minute margin.

But despite the lower standards FirstGroup, the private company which runs Great Eastern, has announced that its profits have soared four-fold over the same period.

A spokesperson for Great Eastern said the train company league tables were unreliable and misleading.

She said: "We only missed out on scoring a B by 0.5 per cent for punctuality. It's not a long drop from where we were before.

"It is difficult to compare each company and we don't think it is really realistic."

She added: "Performance is a priority for us and we take it very seriously. We are always looking to improve.

"If we were not coming up to scratch then our customers would soon let us know."

The number of complaints about Great Eastern have dropped by 27 per cent over the past 12 months, and the company has blamed signal failures beyond their control for the drop in punctuality.

The spokesperson said: "We will try to improve as much as possible and get the figures back on track."

Anglia Railways, which operates mainline trains between London, Colchester and Ipswich, outperformed Great Eastern, holding its B grade for the second year running.

Almost 92 per cent of its trains arrived on time, with 99.3 per cent running.

The company has introduced improvements on tracks and signalling which it says has helped to up its punctuality figures.

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.