TUBE bosses have admitted that Met line services from Chesham and Amersham are in disarray - and have offered little hope for the future.

A team of managers from LUL met with tough questioning from residents in Chesham Town Hall on Monday as they tried to assure them that they were doing their best to improve poor services but were fighting an uphill battle with "clapped out" equipment.

Residents are angry about the poor state of the service, particularly since the introduction of a new timetable last May.

Met line service manager Kevin Hafter said: "I could sit here for some time giving you a long list of incidents and failures since the timetable came in - some you will be familiar with.

"It is the case that the Met line is relatively unreliable - in the overall scheme of things it's not a reliable railway at the moment."

He said of the track to Chesham: "The track is rough because of the old lower speed single track. But it doesn't have very high priority for replacement."

Mr Hafter said months of delays which had led to Chesham Town Council calling for the crisis public meeting were caused mainly by the fact that there has been no signal box in the Watford area since August.

He said: "The wiring in the signal box is around 55 years old, of a type that's not particularly robust and has been degrading for some while. The decision was taken that we needed to completely rewire that facility."

He added: "We have large bits of kit that desperately need replacing. They catch us out and we have to take drastic action."

Passengers spent more than an hour and a half complaining of a poor service which had left many of them no option but to boycott the Chesham shuttle service. Residents also demanded that London Underground give up on its much-derided new timetable - brought in last May without consultation - which slashed off peak services from Amersham.

LUL reaffirmed its commitment to the Chesham branch line and promised to review its decision to stick with virtually the same timetable next year. Mr Hafter said: "I understand the frustration - it's shared by me and everyone involved in running the service - but the level of failure has been pretty significant."

Email us to give your views of what you heard at the meeting or with your concerns about the Met Line. Contact scohen@london.newsquest.co.uk

Full reports on the meeting, with pictures and a look at what may happen from here, see the Amersham & Chesham Free Press on Friday, February 15.