Royal Mail Group UK make high-tech drive to track lost letters

Royal Mail is to use microchip technology to track errant post after accusations that it mislays a million letters a week.

The organisation plans to spend millions of pounds on a surveillance system that will help it to find out how letters get lost and where they end up.

Test letters will be fitted with microchips and sorting offices with tracking devices. The system will track the letters at different points of their journey, and help to identify weak points.

But the move is likely to anger postal unions if they believe that the system is being used to monitor individual workers. A source at the Communication Workers Union said: “There would need to be a strict protocol on where and how it is used.

If it is purely for service standards, then that’s OK, but if it is used on individuals, then that is a different matter.”

There are no plans to offer the system as a service for customers. A spokesman said: “We are looking at this for internal monitoring so that we can identify problems and improve our service. When we know quickly that there are difficulties we will be able to react more effectively.”

Royal Mail has been criticised over lost mail, and it is thought that pressure for the tracking system has come from business users. The organisation is open to competition in its business mail and has lost some high-profile customers such as Vodafone, Royal Bank of Scotland and Powergen.

Royal Mail is expected to begin testing the system in the summer.

Postwatch, the consumers’ group, and Postcomm, the regulator, welcomed the initiative.