UK Royal Mail’s autumn first class letter deliveries among the best on record
Royal Mail’s performance during the busy Autumn period was the best in almost ten years, giving the company a solid base to build on for the future.
New figures show 91.9% of First Class letters were delivered the working day after posting, a similar performance to that achieved between July and September when volumes are lower and transport less vulnerable to bad weather. Every one of Royal Mail’s fifteen performance measures for letter and parcel services showed significant improvements from last year. On a cumulative basis 12 of the fifteen measures have been maintained or improved.
Chief Executive Adam Crozier said, “This is a tremendously encouraging result for everyone in Royal Mail and for our customers, but we know we have more to do. These results clearly buck the usual seasonal trends and show a continuing improvement in underlying performance during the busiest three months of the year.
Second Class post achieved 98.5% delivery within three working days, for the second quarterly period in succession. This was the one of the best performances for Second Class post in the busiest part of the year for almost a decade.
Adam Crozier said, “Everyone in Royal Mail has worked hard week in, week out to bring stability back to the business after the massive but essential changes introduced last Spring. We improved our First Class service performance by almost 4% in three months. Today’s figures show that this strong performance has continued as volumes have increased during the Autumn.
“Our service quality is the top priority for everyone in Royal Mail. It will never be enough to simply return to profitability – we are determined that the service our customers receive should also be demonstrably the best in the market.”
Ends
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Notes to editors
1. Royal Mail’s performance against licence targets during the third Quarter of 2004/05 (October to December) is as follows. Royal Mail’s full Q3 Quality of Service report will be published by the end of February 2005.
Q3
2004-05 Target
level Q3
2003-04
1st Class S&M 91.9% 92.5% 85.0% Best Q3 service since 1995-96
2nd Class S&M 98.5% 98.5% 95.1% Best Q3 service since 1994-95
Mailsort 1 93.5% 91.0% 81.9% Best service at any time of year since 1995-96
Mailsort 2 97.1% 97.5% 91.2% Best Q3 service since 1994-95
Mailsort 3 98.6% 97.5% 94.7% Best Q3 service since 1994-95 and best at any time of year since 1999-00
Presstream 1 91.8% 90.5% 80.1% Best Q3 service since 1995-96
Presstream 2 96.9% 97.5% 88.2% Only bettered once since 1995-96
1st Class PPI 88.7% 90.6% 74.7% Best Q3 service since 1995-96
2nd Class PPI 96.1% 97.4% 89.2% Up 6.9% in 12 months
1st Class Response 79.5% 90.3% 76.7% Up 2.8% in 12 months
2nd Class Response 91.7% 97.5% 87.5% Up 4.2% in 12 months
Standard Parcel 88.9% 90.0% 83.6% Up 5.3% in 12 months
Special Delivery 97.8% 99.0% 96.1% Up 1.7% in 12 months
1995-96 is the first year for which quarterly performance statistics are available.
2. On a cumulative basis, taking into account the comparison with both the strong performance achieved during the first six months of 2003-04 and the period of industrial action last Autumn, 12 of the 15 measures have improved.
