A top railway boss has apologised to commuters for suffering unacceptable delays on their return to the office.

Kent passengers travelling to work in London have been held up for three consecutive Mondays due to a raft of problems.

Fiona Taylor, head of Network Rail routes in Kent, has issued a message to customers and said the service had not been good enough.

Ms Taylor, who is responsible for overseeing Southeastern, Southern and Thameslink services run on time, said: "I'm afraid for the past three Mondays, I haven't been able to do that.

"I'm sorry for the disruption to your journeys especially as I know many of you will be going back to the office after many months at home.

"Although the incidents that have caused delay have all been different including infrastructure failures, derailment and trespassers on the line that doesn't help you get to work or make up for the delays."

She said the team investigates all major service delays and vowed to learn from what happened to ensure trains are not affected and "make changes to stop them happening again".

"Whilst I can't guarantee there won't ever be delays, I can promise you my team care passionately about our passengers and try really hard to give you a safe, reliable and punctual rail service every day," Ms Taylor added.

"Thank you so much for your patience and again, please accept my apologies for the disruption over the past few weeks."

A freight train derailment on the Sidcup line near Lee in south east London caused major problems for two days on September 13.

Trains had to be cancelled between Hither Green and Sidcup on the return to work on the Monday morning.

A signalling problem near New Cross yesterday morning led to long delays once again and on September 6 a power supply issue near Victoria also led to severe issues.

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