The main sorting office for Brighton has slashed its opening hours amid staff shortages and postal delays.
Royal Mail’s sorting office in North Road used to open from 8am to 6 or 7pm most days, except a half day on Monday and Sunday opening hours of 11am to 3pm.
But it will now only be open for four hours a day, except Mondays when it will only be open for two hours and Sunday when it will be closed.
People living in several areas of Brighton have complained that post is taking weeks to arrive, if it turns up at all.
And many have been resorting to regularly going to the sorting office to see if there’s any mail to collect rather than relying on deliveries.
Brighton Pavilion MP Caroline Lucas said: “The way in which Royal Mail is treating my constituents is frankly appalling.
“Post isn’t being delivered for days or even weeks at a time, meaning constituents are being forced to pick items up from the sorting office even more frequently than usual – yet it’s barely even open.
“This is the only sorting office in my entire constituency, serving almost 100,000 people, yet it’s only accessible for 22 hours in the entire week.
“This situation simply isn’t sustainable. I’ve raised Royal Mail’s utterly inadequate delivery service with them on several occasions, and will continue to do so as a matter of urgency.”
A Royal Mail spokesperson said: “We understand the importance that some customers attach to Customer Service Points (CSPs) as one of a number of ways in which they can access our services.
“An increase in doorstep services such as Parcel Collect and Safeplace are helping us to enhance customer convenience and deliver more parcels first time.
“In May this year, we also introduced automatic redelivery of parcels the next working day across the UK for customers who are not at home when posties attempt to deliver the first time.
“Over 99% of parcels are now successfully delivered to customers on the first or second delivery attempt. This is reducing the need for customers to collect parcels from CSPs.
“To keep pace with the changing behaviour of our customers, we are amending the opening hours of CSPs. We have a range of options free-of-charge for customers who want to arrange for an item to be redelivered.
“We are sorry to residents who have experienced delays in Brighton. Improving our quality of service is our top priority and we are committed to restoring service levels to where our customers expect them to be.
“At the local delivery office, there have been recent issues with staffing levels which have been affected by vacancies and sick absences. We have been actively recruiting to fill these gaps and have brought in additional casual workers to help with the demand.
“Every effort is being made to keep delays to a minimum. Post continues to be delivered, and those who have mail and do not receive it on the day they expect, will always be prioritised the following day.
“Across our business we have plans in place to drive service levels and reduce absence at our delivery offices, we hope and expect to see further progress in the coming months.”
THE SERVICE THERE IS ABSOLUELY ATROCIOUS I’VR BEEN COMPLAINING FOR ALMOST 2 YEARS ABOUT ITEMS BEING LEFT OUTSIDE MY FLAT DOOR WHICH IS NOT A SAFE SPACE I SEE A DIFFERENT MANAGER EVERYTIME THEIR ” CUSTOMER SERVICE ” DEPT WHEN I GOT THROUGH EVENTUALLY SUMMER IT UP ” DON’T COMPLAIN TO THEM , COMPLAIN TO US AS THEY KNOWA NOTHING , NOTHING ABOUT CUSTOMER SERVICE ‘ FRED AND PAUL WHO EORKS WITH HIM ARE HELPFUL ,BUT ONE OF THEM ISN ‘T AND KEEPS TELLING ME THEY HAVE 60 ,000 CUSTOMERS NOT JUST ME ( AND I GET MORE GRIEF THAN ALL OF THEM PUT TOGETHER ,,) THEY ALWAYS BLAME AGENCY STAFF THEIR ONLY EFFICIENT DEPT IS THE UNDERPAID POSTAGE SECTION
How do you expect anybody to read if you put it all in capitals?
Agree. Writing in capitals is the equivalent of shouting or ranting and therefore I won’t bother to read.
Wow, you’re unreasonably angry, don’t take it out on your keyboard.
Come on Posties, can’t you form a Co-Operative. You’d do it so much better.
Have it on good authority that if a postie is on holiday, the route doesn’t get touched until they are back a week later. Makes sense, we had a week with no post then the next Monday 10 letters all addressed a week prior. The exception is if they send tracked items as they are actually being scored on delivering them on time.
Last week a tracked parcel I paid extra for, to get next day delivery, got stuck instead at Gatwick MC for 4 days.
No ‘out for delivery’ message got posted. on the Royal Mail website to show it had reached the city before I was surprised by the knock on the door delivering it.
I queried & was told staff are leaving Royal Mail – 2 more this week. And it is Gatwick MC that is the big issue wrecking local deliveries.
In May I waited some weeks for delivery of tea from Northern Ireland – with NO TRACKER INFO online at any stage whatsoever. Eventually, on a Sunday, out of the unnotified blue, a woman hired to help Royal Mail with the backlog delivered my excellent tea.
Losing credibility leads to losing ANY mail service and status as a third world country looms into view. Who will stop the rot?
I’m reliably informed that Gatwick Mail Centre has been clearing its workloads reasonably consistently. The problem, as identified in the article, is staffing issues in delivery offices. Indeed, I understand that workers from the Mail Centre have been deployed at Brighton DO to plug some of the gaps. The company’s prioritisation of tracked parcels over letter deliveries, and the increasing pressure that delivery officers have been subjected to, has meant that delivery rounds are left uncovered. I have heard reports of 3 week-old work being left in sorting frames. Staff retention and sickness levels in delivery offices remain chronic problems.
The long spiel by the Toyal Mail spokesperson is management-speak horror, such as “drive service levels”. If they cannot use the language well, how can they tun a company?
Like all HR & PR talking heads they live in their own bubble. They speak their exclusive version of word salad spin that anybody in the real world struggles to make sense of.
Ex Royal Mail here. Ever since privatisation the higher management are only interested in parcels and junk mail plus of course profits for shareholders. Don’t blame staff. They have been hammered with an ongoing process of extra tasks including impossible loads to deliver in the timescale allotted by some clueless IT programmer in an office the other end of the country. The physical and mental stress postal staff are under, including a bullying culture by all levels of management is horrendous. I bailed out a few years back. It has got progressively worse since then.
Really sorry to hear that, Chris. These kinds of cultures don’t deserve saving, in my opinion. Renationalisation is sounding better every time I hear a story from people on how profits for shareholders are more important than professional pride in the business.
No post here for 10 days. Rubbish to claim that they prioritise delivery for the day after a missed delivery.
No post here for ages.
What a sad demise of a fabulous service.