Bosses from East Anglia’s rail companies have agreed a new deal to try to ensure reliability improves across the region.

On the day that Greater Anglia started its new franchise, it was announced it had agreed a new “accord” with Network Rail to try to ensure improvements on the main line to London.

Greater Anglia managing director Jamie Burles said he realised reliability was the number on priority for passengers. His company and Network Rail were going to need a “step-change” in performance if they were going to improve the punctuality of services.

Greater Anglia bossess attended a Network Rail executive meeting last week, and a joint team has been created to focus on how they can deliver the key features of the bid.

The regional boss of Network Rail Richard Schofield said they were currently drawing up a bid for funding from the government for work, which will take place after 2019.

He said that the key feature of the franchise – new trains – would require infrastructure work to make them reach their full potential and he was confident they could achieve that, but warned the timetable was “slightly more difficult” because they had to run freight and passenger trains.

“The timetable is absolutely fundamental. We could run a Norwich in 90 service today, but what would you move out of the way? It is about compromise at station stops or frequency, and it is the pinch points.”

On the day that Greater Anglia officially started its new franchise, Mr Burles was able to show off the new ticket office that has just opened at Ipswich station to New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership chairman Mark Pendlington.

That opened at the weekend – and the new Starbucks coffee shop is due to open before the end of the month.

Mr Burles said that the Ipswich in 60, Norwich in 90 ambition had been very important during the campaign to improve services – and it was an aim that would be met.

“But even more important is that we are looking at cutting journey times of all our services by about 10% during the franchise,” he said.