THE LOST POST
THE Post Office was last night facing claims that almost a million letters
go missing every week.
Revealing the astonishing figure, the Post Office watchdog demanded major
improvements in service.
Postwatch – the new body created to speak up for consumers – calculated
from a survey that 957,600 letters go astray each week.
In the same report, it claims almost two million first class letters fail
to arrive on time every day. The Post Office denied the figure for lost mail
but has agreed to measure the number of letters which go missing.
Most letters are simply delivered to the wrong address but Postwatch says
postmen are increasingly 'dumping' sacks of mail.
Postwatch claims that from a sample of 15,000 correctly typed and addressed
letters, 17 disappeared. Multiplied to reflect the 77million letters sent
every day over a full six-day week, this represented more than 500,000.
Experts estimated that the figure would almost double if the sample also
included handwritten addresses and incomplete postcodes.
Postwatch yesterday warned the Post Office to improve its service or face
fines if it fails to deliver. Peter Carr, chairman of Postwatch, said:
'Customers are getting fed up with the decline in service. The solution
is in the hands of the management.
'If they cannot get their act together then they are leaving the door wide
open to other people to come in and take their business.
'The Post Office has a lot to prove at the moment if it is still to remain
a service that is admired and cherished by the general public.'
The watchdog has set the Post Office new mail delivery targets.
It must deliver 92.1 per cent of first class mail on time next year and
92.5 per cent in 2002/3.
Also highlighted in the report were sliding standards at the Post Office
parcel delivery arm and customer queues in branches.
The performance of the Parcelforce standard service, which delivers within
three days, has fallen four per cent in one year.
Just 84 per cent of parcels are now delivered on time – meaning 4,000
parcels every day are late.
And a staggering two million people a week now wait longer than five
minutes in a post office queue, up 1.3 per cent since 1997.
Poor service has been compounded by record numbers of post office closures
and industrial relations at an all-time low, the watchdog said.
Around 30,000 days have been lost since September because of strikes, more
than for the whole of the 1999/2000 financial year.
Mr Carr added that over half of all UK strikes last year were at the Post
Office.
Also revealed in the watchdog's report was the fact that up to 600 sub post
offices could close by April – double the amount last year.
Postwatch's findings came as the Post Office prepares to open its services
to private competition for the first time under a new licence starting on
Monday.
The Post Office said 'catastrophic' disruption on the railways coupled with
a series of unofficial strikes have hit the reliability of first class mail
deliveries.
One in three mail trains are running at least half-an-hour late every night
because of rail repairs sparked by the Hatfield crash.
First class mail reliability for the year to the end of this month is set
to fall to around 89 per cent – three per cent below its target and the
lowest since 1996/1997 when there was a series of national strikes.
Second class mail deliveries are expected to reach their delivery target of
98.5 per cent.
John Roberts, chief executive of the Post Office, said improvements have
been made. But he added: 'This trend has been undermined by five months of
disruption to our mail train services since the Hatfield disaster and
unacceptable levels of unofficial industrial action.'
DAILY MAIL, 21st March 2001
