Scots deliver worst class post in Britain

Scotland has the worst postal service in the UK, according to the Royal Mail’s own figures.

The six poorest performing postcode areas in Britain for delivering first-class mail the next day are north of the Border.

Lerwick, Kirkcaldy, Borders, Dundee, Falkirk and the Hebrides had the lowest percentage of post delivered on time in the first quarter of 2007.

In Scotland, only Glasgow managed to scrape into the top 20 best performing areas, in 18th place.

Lerwick in the Shetlands had just 45.3 per cent of first-class mail arriving on time, compared with Watford where 96.7 per cent was delivered next day.

Alan Alexander, of watchdogs Postwatch Scotland, said: “We are deeply concerned about the considerable dip in performance among Scottish postcode areas for first-class post.

“Kirkcaldy and the Borders had the poorest service in the UK during the period, with Royal Mail missing their minimum target by a considerable margin.

“Royal Mail has pointed to poor weather and unofficial industrial action in Edinburgh as the causes of the deterioration in service.

Across Britain, Royal Mail achieved 93 per cent of first-class post delivered the next working day, meeting their UK minimum target.

The company met their local minimum target of 91.5 per cent of first-class post delivered the next working day in 98 of the 118 UK postcode areas.

But this target was only achieved in eight of the 16 Scots postcode areas.

Royal Mail manager John Manson said: “Unfortunately, for the first quarter of 2007-8 our quality of service to customers in the east of Scotland postcode areas was below our usual high standard.

“This was because of a short period of unofficial industrial action, which had a knock-on effect.

TOP FIVE
1 Watford
2 Bradford
3 Bromley
4 Redhill
5 Luton

BOTTOM FIVE
1 Lerwick
2 Kirkcaldy
3 Borders
4 Dundee
5 Hebrides