Commuters endured a third day of disruption on the railway yesterday with faulty signals affecting thousands of passengers.

All services going from Brighton and through Gatwick were delayed by 30 minutes from the early morning through to the afternoon yesterday.

The disruption follows extensive delays on both Wednesday and Thursday – ahead of rail companies increasing their fares by an average of 2.2% in January.

From today, rail passengers are set for more disruption with London Bridge closed for 16 days while improvements are made to the station.

MPs have called on rail operators to improve their service with Caroline Lucas, MP for Brighton Pavilion, calling on the railways to be returned to public ownership.

She said: “If the Government really wants to make savings and improve our transport network for everyone, it should recognise that privatisation has failed and return the railways to public ownership.”

Dozens of services were cancelled and thousands of passengers delayed after a signal fault at Burgess Hill at 5.35am yesterday.

The problem was eventually fixed later in the morning but it took until the mid afternoon for services to return to normal. Martin Galvin, who lives in Brighton and works in Holborn, described the service as a “shambles”.

He said: “£4,000 a year for this, every train I’ve been on this week has been late, it just gets worse, in indirect proportion to the fares. You can’t make plans, as you can’t rely on them to get you into town with any sort of reliability. I was meant to be at a retirement breakfast this morning for a brilliant couple.”

Mark Windsor, who lives in Worthing and works in Putney, said the service was a “complete joke”.

He added: “My work isn’t forgiving and I’m now going to have to work late tonight to make up for the time. Not to mention that next month we, the commuters, will be expected to pay more for our tickets when the annual price hike kicks in.

“Personally I don’t see how they can demand more money when we get such a poor service.”

A spokesman for Southern Railway said performance in recent days had “not been acceptable”. He said: “We are investing in improving the reliability of our assets, including signalling and track.

“We are bringing in additional fast response staff across all disciplines, from track, signalling and mobile managers, and we have new contingency arrangements being brought in on top of that.”