MAIL HITS BACK AT WATCHDOG'S TACTICS
By SARAH KEY BRISTOL Post Office has hit back at a new postal consumer
watchdog
claiming it is using shock tactics to promote its own services. Postwatch,
whose nearest office is in Plymouth, has claimed that the
Post Office nationally are failing to deliver 1.9 million
first-class letters on time and that over one million letters go
missing each year. In Bristol one out of ten first-class letters fail to
reach their
destination the next day – a situation which has been the accepted
norm for years, say the Post Office. But Postwatch state there is a
general level of poor standards
compounded by record numbers of closures and industrial relations at
an all-time low. Bristol’s Royal Mail – who operate the fifth largest
depot in
Britain – have hit out at the watchdog for using shock tactics to
over-promote their launch this week. A spokesman for Postwatch said:
“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.” But head of external relations for the Royal Mail, Richard Smith,
said: “The reasons for the post not being delivered or first class not
reaching destination the next day are many and a really complicated
combination of things. “Postwatch are definitely not showing the truth of
the matter and it
is incredibly unfair of them. We have been beset by a number of
difficulties over the past year which have been completely out of
our hands and we are all working hard to resolve the resulting
problems. “We spend over GBP10 million a year nationally on trying to find
homes for the huge amount of mail that has not been addressed
adequately. “In fact we have a whole team of people working in Filton that
try
and get problem mail to its destination before it goes to the lost
mail depot in Belfast. “The first class situation has been hampered by the
rail disasters
that have held up the entire country. Without portraying the real
situation they are making things look a whole lot worse than they
actually are.” Adrian Booth for the Post Office says that Bristol’s Royal
Mail is
on line with national targets. The South West depot of Filton has
experienced industrial action but
has not been hit as hard as the north by rail repairs after the
Hatfield crash five months ago, he said. Target delivery for next day post
in Bristol is 92 per cent and the
area achieved 89.8 per cent over the last three months. Last year
over the same period Bristol Royal Mail made this target, but the
three per cent decline is a result of industrial action, they say.
Copyright 2001 Bristol Evening Post. Source : World Reporter (Trade
Mark) – FT McCarthyBRISTOL EVENING POST, 23rd March 2001
