GREATER Anglia is to invest £10million on more cleaners, revamping waiting rooms and upgrading ticket gates.

The firm, which operates trains between Southend Victoria and London Liverpool Street via Rayleigh, Wickford and Billericay, has announced a raft of improvements to start from January.

The improvements, which are inaddition to £20million of investment announced earlier this year, comes after feedback from customers.

Jamie Burles, managing director of Greater Anglia, said: "We are totally committed to delivering a better service for our customers, focusing on those areas they prioritise as important.

“This extensive package of service improvements represents a major investment in key areas of service delivery including the on-train travelling environment, cleaning, seating capacity and performance.

“In a short term franchise we will now be investing over £30 million in customer-focused enhancements aimed at continuously improving the quality of the train service our passengers experience."

The firm, which has faced unflattering comparisons to rival c2c, which runs trains between Shoebury and London Fenchurch Street, will take on 40 more cleaning staff, including eight roving cleaners working mainly on the lines from Southend and Clacton.

Ten more customer service staff will also be brought in to provide advice and information to passengers.

Waiting rooms between Southend and Billericay will be “refreshed”.

New automatic ticket gates at Southend Victoria and London Liverpool Street will allow customers to scan the bar code on tickets printed out at home or on their mobile, rather than show them to a member of staff.

The new package comes after Greater Anglia’s franchise was extended until Octover 2016.

It is a 50 per cent increase in the investment in service upgrades it is already providing over that time and directly targets the issues that customers and stakeholders highlight as priorities - including on-train condition and cleaning, better performance, seating availability and crowding, customer information provision and easier ticket purchase and systems.