Bright spot in disastrous national numbers for the Royal Mail

Having suffered from one of the worst delivery services in the country, there was good news for local residents this week. New figures from the Royal Mail show a marked improvement in the percentage of first class mail being delivered on time to the local area.

The figures which are for the three months to June 30th 2004 were all the more remarkable given the general deterioration in the overall performance of the Royal Mail. These results show that Royal Mail failed to achieve minimum performance levels for all 15 licence targets.

The SW region of London, which had effectively been the worst in the country according to the last set of figures, saw a 5.1% improvement to 87.2% of first class letters being delivered on time. The W post code area saw a 2.5% improvement to 87.1%

A spokesperson for the Royal Mail said that there has been further improvement in July; in the SW area it rose 3.8% to 91% and in the W area the rate rose 3.4% to 90.5%. The most recently published quarterly figures reflect a time at which major changes to working practises were being introduced.

Both areas are still below the national average but they have moved out of the table of the bottom 20 worst performing areas in the country, in which they had been a fixture since the figures have been collected.

Only 6 of the UK’s 121 postcode areas were above the minimum average target of 92.5 per cent of 1st class letters delivered the next day. Overall Royal Mail managed to deliver only 88.3 per cent of 1st class letters on time. This is the poorest quarterly performance for more than 3 years. It means that over 1.7 million 1st class letters were not delivered each day in April, May and June.

Lib. Dem. Councillor Gary Malcolm said: “Residents in Acton and Chiswick have really suffered over the past year with missed and late deliveries. It is also a scandal that the Royal Mail Chief Executive, Adam Crozier, has collected bonuses on top of his already large £500,000 salary.”

Peter Carr, Chairman of Postwatch commenting on the continuing poor service said,“We are consistently promised by Royal Mail that performance will improve. These results show service levels in the first quarter of this year did not improve on last year’s very poor performance in 11 of the 15 targets. For the last 3 years, customers have been paying higher prices for a declining service. This is a bad consumer equation."

He rejected the Royal Mail's call for a price increase saying that service levels should improve before on is granted.

September 1, 2004