Greater Anglia has denied that a slow roll-out of its new Aventra suburban trains is behind claims of crowding on some peak-time suburban services into London in recent weeks.

We have twice been sent pictures taken by concerned commuters showing people unable to observe social distancing on trains because there was not enough room to observe the two-metre rule.

Ipswich Star: Commuters were concerned about the lack of social distancing on some trains.Commuters were concerned about the lack of social distancing on some trains. (Image: Stephen Francavilla)

Over recent months Greater Anglia has been losing many of its old suburban trains which are being replace by the new Aventras which have been built at Alstom's Derby train factory.

However so far only a fraction of the 133 five-car Aventras have arrived in the region, and not all have yet been cleared to enter service.

Meanwhile more than 90 of its older trains have moved on to other operators - or been sent to scrapyards.

Greater Anglia is currently operating 82% of its pre-pandemic services and is due to bring in a new timetable in the middle of this month - and a spokeswoman for the company said the crowding had not been caused by a shortage of trains for commuters.

She said the issues had only occurred on a few morning services into Liverpool Street and often were caused by passengers bunching together on the train.

"We have looked at these services where there have been concerns and found that sometimes there is plenty of space on other parts of the train - which is why we urge passengers to find a less crowded area of the train.

"The new trains are much longer and where they are coming in there is more space but on the vast majority of services there is no problem with social distancing."

Greater Anglia spoke regularly to the Department for Transport which now has to approve timetable changes.

The full trains are mainly commuter trains operating in Essex - we heard from passengers who travelled from Manningtree and Kelvedon who were concerned about the number of passengers.

The Aventra trains will eventually serve most routes in Essex and travel to both Ipswich and Cambridge. The first Ipswich service to be taken over by one of these trains began operating at the end of March.