Patients have missed hospital appointments, bank cards have failed to arrive and blood test results have been delayed because of problems with Royal Mail deliveries, according to Independent councillor Peter Atkinson.
He called on Royal Mail to “come clean” about the mail delivery service that it was currently offering and demanded urgent action to improve performance.
Councillor Atkinson, who represents North Portslade, said that the postal firm needed to improve management practices to enable it to retain staff.
He has been in dialogue with Royal Mail head office for almost two years about the lack of regular deliveries in his ward.
In correspondence last November, he even listed several examples of residents not receiving mail deliveries for weeks on end.
The reply that he received was, according to Councillor Atkinson, “staggering in its denial of the problem and breathtaking in its assertion that all mail was being delivered on time.”
In the most recent letter from the company, a senior manager at Royal Mail head office said: “I have been in contact with the customer operations manager at Portslade delivery office who has confirmed there are no current issues with the delivery of mail to North Portslade.
“The customer operations manager has confirmed that mail deliveries are taking place six days a week throughout or at peak periods when there is mail available to be delivered.
“I would like to reassure you that, should there be an occasion when a delivery round cannot be completed on a particular day, it will become the priority the following working day.”
Councillor Atkinson even carried out a survey of people living on a small estate off Fox Way including Langridge Drive, Shepherd Way, the Parks and Cornford Close.
He received a deluge of replies. Responses included
- “Royal Mail head office saying that we get post delivered six days a week is simply and absolutely not true. We are lucky if we get genuine post (excluding fliers) once a fortnight.”
- “Every eight to ten days, sometimes longer.”
- “I would like to inform you that we have only been receiving our post once fortnightly here. Hope this helps provide evidence that Royal Mail is continuing to provide a poor service to this area.”
- “I went down to the sorting office a few days ago and picked up 29 letters. Still only getting mail once every two weeks.”
- “Every three weeks. Postie says he gets taken off post to do parcels.”
- “I can confirm postal deliveries have been a dump of post every fortnight last few months of last year. It has been a number of years since we had post six days a week.”
Councillor Atkinson said: “I could go on and on but it is totally and absolutely clear that residents in North Portslade are not getting anywhere near the postal service that Royal Mail state. This would be ludicrous if it weren’t so significant.”
The problems caused by late deliveries or the failure to deliver at all include
- Missed hospital appointments
- Late medical information such as blood tests
- Non-receipt of a speeding or parking fine resulting in an increased penalty
- Non-receipt of goods resulting in an eventual doubling up of what was ordered
- Missed birthday cards
- Late or non-receipt of bank cards
Councillor Atkinson said: “I feel like a broken record. It’s patently obvious that Royal Mail are not providing anywhere near an acceptable service and haven’t been doing so for some years. Urgent remedial action is needed.
“Again, I would stress that this is not the fault of the ordinary ‘posties’ who are doing the best that they can in the circumstances. The service needs to be adequately staffed and well managed.”
This is what happens if you privatise a public service. Greedy shareholders put profit first and the ordinary punter suffers. Time to renationalise with compensation paid on the basis of proven need only. Good for Cllr Atkinson for holding Royal Mail to account.
Perhaps Cllr Atkinson should make a strong submission to the useless Ofcom in the light of their latest disingenous (and highly biased in favour of Royal Mail) suggestion document. According to Ofcom, the only way for RM to survive is to cut down on deliveries – although Mr Atkinson’s residents don’t seem to get many deliveries anyway and he has been saying this consistently for ages, and I believe Peter Kyle MP has also taken up the cudgels with RM over their ‘service’ – or hike the already unacceptable cost of stamps. Like him, I don’t blame posties or frontline staff, but I do blame useless management /executives who couldn’t run a bath, let alone an efficient postal operation, and who are milking the business dry for the benefit of shareholders.
Unfortunately, Amazon have started to use RM for some parcel deliveries and the other day I had an apology from Amazon because a package hadn’t turned up (due to an issue with RM it said), so it seems that RM can’t even properly manage the parcel deliveries that they prefer over letter deliveries because parcels are more lucrative. And yet, if Amazon happen to use DPD instead of RM, then the package does turn up when it’s supposed to.
To see and hear a spokeswoman for Ofcom on the news she was literally advocating what Royal Mail was asking for. Perhaps in some misguided way they think reducing the terms of the Universal Service Obligation would preserve the service for the public. I truly believe that the current levels of service when it comes to letters is totally contrived as a way of demonstrating that the public don’t need daily service. A bit akin to banks closing all their High Street branches citing people don’t use them anymore after spending the last 20 years encouraging everyone to embrace internet banking. Rishi said any reduction in the USO wasn’t going to happen on his watch but that won’t stop RM doing what they want. Many people claiming they only receive post once a week or even less. RM has been privatised for just 10 years and already it has come to this. Equally it should be understood that RM is the only regulated letter carrier. Thanks to an EU directive long before privatisation the market is fully liberalised but don’t expect any other company Amazon, DHL, Evri et al to be taking on letter delivery to every UK address at a uniformed base price of 75p that ain’t and never will happen. RM have long delivered Amazon parcels both prior to them setting up their own logistics network but now usually for fulfilment of third party sellers but primarily for remote addresses or where they deem it economically unviable. And under the USO Royal Mail have no option but to take this on. If for example every Johnny Come Lately operator was forced by legislation to collect and deliver letters based say on their pro rata share of the parcel market how would they get on ? The impact of falling letter volumes has been addressed by RM by the implementation of a ‘ managing the decline’ program . Basically as the volume falls so does the number of staff however the flaw being that they still need staff to deliver packets/parcels which they prioritise ahead of mail no matter how much their management deny it.
Well said Peter.
Regardless of the causes (and there are more than one) – the more things go wrong with it the more people find alternatives because they have to. Even bank cards can now be on your phone and the NHS appointments/results can be done via email/telephone. This denial you mention is hastening the end of RM.
There will be nothing to nationalise at this rate.
My repeat prescription drugs due December 22 never arrived they were in a pile in Princes Royal postal hub. I did not die, however I am sure many vulnerable people, who had chosen postal delivery for medication suffered and died. No shame, no apologies.
My post, and I live near to Brighton sorting office is every two weeks. Yesterday just flyers.
And Royal Mail have been paid for flyers for years and we pay to recycle.
Caroline Lucas contacted December 22 about this. It has only deteriorated. We appear to be powerless against asset stripping private sector.
Pharmacy 2 U, eh? In the business, they are considered quite the dirty word.
It’s the same countrywide .
From what I hear from an insider. Shortage of staff,useless union reps making it difficult to manage changes . Staff leave and other posties have to pick up extra on top of there own rounds. Mail only goes out once a week on average.
Posties aren’t to blame
we are lucky to get two deliveries per week in Hove i’m still getting christmas cards. Parcels are getting as bad, i think the RM is on its way out.
Regarding things medical, most of this is being transferred over to the NHS App these days. Had a 96 year old lady gushing about how she’d learnt how to use it!
Utter rubbish. This just isn’t true – I am a postie working in the area for +15 yrs and the answer is simple – no one actually gets a quarter of the letters they used to! I walk past so many houses each day who don’t have a single letter (sometimes walk past 20-30 in a row!) you think how many emails or apps that tell us what a letter used to!! Parcels on the other hand… some people get +10 every single day, don’t know how they afford it! Government need to privatise however – needs investment to keep service going, hopefully a labour government can sort it out.
Live in Portslade village. We’re lucky to receive post once a week. I’ve had some letters and deliveries come weeks after they were meant to. It’s very frustrating and painful, especially when waiting for something urgent.
And for the record I don’t blame the postal workers who deliver post. I think they do a great job and should be paid more. It’s the fault of the senior executives and directors who get overpaid for doing very little but feel justified in paying postal workers pittance and treating their staff like rubbish. I’d like to see all the overpaid senior execs and directors out doing postal rounds. They’re clueless and I don’t think they’d be able to deliver any mail at all.