EAST Coast rail was hardest hit by the recent severe cold weather of all of the region's train operators with about a third of its services failing to run on time, new figures show.

A total of 67.2 per cent of the company's services were on time between December 13 last year and January 9 - down 21.2 per cent on the same period 12 months ago.

The publicly run East Coast - which replaced National Express last year - was forced to run a revised timetable on the East Coast Mainline with services only recently getting back to normal.

It said it had continued to keep trains running on its busiest routes, despite the severe weather.

The Network Rail figures also showed that First Transpennine Express suffered a big drop in punctuality - 75.7 per cent of its trains running on time, a decrease of 14.8 per cent year-on-year.

First Transpennine cancelled services between York and Newcastle during the cold snap with bus services replacing some of its trains.

On Arriva Cross Country, which links the North-East with Yorkshire, the Midlands and the South-West, 77 per cent of trains ran on time between December 13 and January 9, a year-on-year decrease of 10.5 per cent.

Northern Rail, which operates trains between Bishop Auckland, Darlington, Middlesbrough and Saltburn, suffered least in the bad weather with 82.1 per cent of its trains on time, just 3.4 per cent down year-on-year.

Network Rail's operations and customer service director Robin Gisby said that nationally eight out of ten services ran to time despite the extreme weather.

:: The Government will offer longer contracts to train operators in the future with franchises being let for a minimum of ten years and some going up to 22 years in length in return for additional investment, Transport Secretary Lord Adonis has said.

There will also be higher penalties if companies decide to walk away from their franchise and they will be required to pay larger deposits - known as performance bonds.