Floods and torrential rain have been blamed by two of the country's main rail operators for poor punctuality figures.

East Coast managed to run 84.9% of its services on time while Virgin Trains's figures were 86.5% for the period June 24 to July 21.

The line was hit badly at the end of June when thousands of passengers faced delays and disruption after landslides and flooding hit.

In comparison, c2c services between Essex and London Fenchurch Street set a new punctuality record with a score of 97.1%.

Nationally, 92.7% of trains hit their punctuality target, up slightly from last year's figure of 92.2% for the same period.

Commuter trains must arrive within five minutes and long distance services within 10 minutes to count as being on time.

Trains cancelled due to external factors, such as the weather, vandalism or suicides, still count against operators' scores.

An East Coast spokesman said: "The unprecedented wet weather, which caused severe flooding and landslips at the end of the wettest June on record, was responsible for two out of the three incidents that caused most delay to East Coast services.

"Our moving annual target, which indicates the longer term improvements, continues to rise ahead of target."

Steven Knight of Virgin Trains said: "We are disappointed but we did have the severe weather with torrential rain and landslips."

National Express runs c2c, which covers the Olympic venue stations of West Ham and Leigh-on-Sea, the venue for next week's mountain biking. Managing director Julian Drury said: "c2c is now taking thousands of passengers to the Games every day on a record-breaking train service."