Post Office turns against rail. 'Catastrophically late' first class mail may be moved back to road or air
The Post Office last night threatened to remove first class mail from rail and put it on the roads or even in the air because of a failure by the rail industry to help deliver millions of first class letters on time.
The PO said it would take action unless the situation dramatically improved. Most of the 8m first class letters carried by rail each day are “catastrophically late” and there is little sign of improvement.
The PO said it was in discussions with English, Welsh and Scottish (EWS), the rail freight company which carries the mail, to see what improvements could be made. Of the 59 mail trains which operate each night, 20 or more are running 30 minutes late and miss vital connections with delivery vans for onward transmission to sorting centres.
The PO is under pressure from the industry regulator to improve first class mail deliveries. Last year it only achieved an 89.1% success rate and this year it has been instructed by the regulator to raise its performance to 92.1% or face financial penalties.
Yesterday the PO said: “This situation cannot go on indefinitely.” It relies heavily on rail for its rail deliveries and its £50m contract with EWS is one of the most lucrative for the freight company, which is losing millions of pounds a year.
A spokesman for the PO, which has assumed the global name of Consignia, said EWS had consistently defaulted on its contract, which has a further five years to run. The PO could have taken legal action against EWS but has so far refrained from doing so.
The position has been made worse by the impact of the Hatfield rail crash in October last year. The crash paralysed the industry, which has still not fully recovered, but the effect on postal efficiency has been particularly severe.
Even in the 10 months before Hatfield, according to the PO, 95% of its mail trains were running late. Although there has been some improvement in the past few months, its services are still poor.
Its relationship with Railtrack is only beginning to heal after a clash at Christmas when Railtrack announced a closure of part of the network for signalling improvements. This was done without any consultation with the PO, whose services could have been severely restricted for 10 days. Railtrack only relented and restored some access to the PO after a strong protest from the company.
The PO is reluctant to pull out of rail. It has invested £200m in its own rail terminal at Willesden in north London, a hub from which its trains go to all parts of the country. This development had the effect of taking hundreds of PO vans off the roads, particularly in central London.
The Willesden terminal has been supplemented by several regional centres in Bristol, Manchester and Scotland.
Some members of the PO’s board want the company to review its commitment to rail and revert to road. But this would require more investment and, with mounting congestion on the roads, might be counter-productive.
EWS admits that its performance has not been good but says it hopes to resolve its difficulties with the PO. It has introduced newer, faster trains to haul the PO’s mail fleet at speeds of more than 100mph, but large-scale engineering works by Railtrack do not make them easy to test.
