Axed mail trains to make comeback

ROYAL MAIL is to bring back rail deliveries less than a year after it axed the service to save costs amid concerns that the busy Christmas period could be hit by poor performance.

The U-turn will see the firm running four mail trains up and down the country daily, with the first services starting next month. If they increase efficiency and help restore public confidence in the struggling postal network, they may be brought back permanently.

The company is expecting to handle about 2.1 billion letters and parcels in the four weeks before Christmas, but it fears bad weather could hamper distribution by road and air.

Transport problems may be compounded by a shortage of manpower. Royal Mail is recruiting 23,000 temporary staff but some postal workers, who feel their workload is too demanding, are threatening to withdraw overtime.

The decision to scrap mail trains was taken last year following a transport review. It ended a 173-year-old tradition immortalised in Night Mail, a poem by WH Auden.

The move, part of a Pounds 90m cost-cutting plan, was condemned by green groups for putting more traffic on the roads. Last month, however, Paul Bateson, the logistics chief who headed the review, was removed from the management board after Royal Mail failed to meet a single one of its 15 performance targets.

The deal to bring back mail trains has been struck with GB Railfreight. Four trains will run daily between London and Scotland carrying up to 5m items of post.

Two of the services will run until next March, when Royal Mail will decide whether to keep them going.

The new services, however, will not include travelling post offices to sort mail and are a fraction of the 60 nightly trains that ran two years ago.

“This is part of the huge effort to make sure we handle the Christmas mailbag successfully,” said a spokesman. “Having these trains will give us additional flexibility.”

Last week it emerged that Postwatch, the consumer watchdog, is likely to receive 40,000 complaints about the mail this year against 6,300 in 2002.