PUNCTUALITY on Helensburgh's trains is worse than the ScotRail average, according to newly-released official figures.

The latest report on ScotRail's performance says that 88.4 per cent of the company's services reached their destination within four minutes and 59 seconds of their timetabled arrival time, having called at all scheduled stations - the rail industry's standard 'public performance measure' - for the four week period from January 6 until February 2.

This means the 'moving annual average' – the rolling performance over the previous 12 months – stands at 87.3 per cent.

But at Helensburgh Central the rolling 12-month figure was only 82.2 per cent.

And under the much stricter standard of trains reaching the station within 59 seconds of their scheduled arrival time is applied, the figure plunged to just 43.9 per cent.

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The latest PPM figures are the best for punctuality on ScotRail's network since September, and the performance for the period from January 6 to February 2 has shown a significant improvement on the previous four-week period figure of 84.2 percent.

The two incidents that had the most impact on the performance of the ScotRail Alliance – a partnership between Network Rail Scotland and ScotRail - for the period were a signal fault at Glasgow Central and a fault with a train near Haymarket, the latter affecting services on the Helensburgh-Edinburgh route.

Significantly, the number of failures for trains arriving on time, caused by incidents outside Scotland, are up 45 per cent for the year to date.

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David Simpson, operations director of the ScotRail Alliance, said: “Everyone at the ScotRail Alliance is working flat out to improve punctuality for our customers, and it is a real positive to see performance continuing to show such significant improvement.

“We know that this continues to be a challenging time, and there are areas where we need to deliver a better service, but things are moving in the right direction.

“The investment we are making in Scotland’s railway is delivering more services than ever before and we are committed to giving our customers the service they expect and deserve.”

Last month ScotRail admitted it did not expect to meet its punctuality target of 92.5 per cent until 2021.