Mail checks will show true losses and delays

INDEPENDENT auditors have been appointed to supervise surveys of late postal deliveries and losses of mail.

Quarterly performance figures produced by Consignia, the company which owns the Post Office, Royal Mail and Parcelforce, will no longer be based simply on the number of first-class items delivered the next day but on the delivery of all mail.

Deloitte & Touche, the London-based chartered accountants, have been given a three-year contract to monitor the surveys after complaints from Postwatch, the industry's watchdog, that existing research is too limited and not independent.

Mail losses are known to run into millions of letters and cards each week. Peter Carr, chairman of Postwatch, said yesterday: "We fear the new broader surveys will show that the real situation is worse even than existing figures show.

"Until now, surveys carried out by the Post Office have used standard-size letters with printed addresses fully postcoded. But in real life 38 per cent of stamped and metered mail is handwritten, many business letters have window box envelopes and not all mail carries postcodes.

"First-class mail is something like a fifth of the total post. Future tests will involve all mail." Consignia, which was given two years in April to prove it should continue to hold its licence to run the postal services, has to achieve 92.1 per cent next-day deliveries for first-class mail. The figure has fallen from 92 per cent in 1994-5 to 86.5 per cent this year.

Latest figures show that only nine of the country's 121 postal districts are meeting the 91.2 per cent target, headed by Bradford (94.4), Sheffield (93.2) and Sunderland (93.2).

The poorest-performing areas include east London (73.4), Enfield and Harrow in north London and Watford, Herts. Some two million out of 22 million first-class letters do not arrive the next day and five million out of 58 million second-class letters do not arrive within three days.

Mr Carr said unofficial action by post workers sticking to old practices and resisting new technology had affected performance figures in many urban areas.

"There are indications that the situation has improved. But the need for postal services to be more responsive to change has never been greater and, since the Post Office was thrown open to competition after losing its monopoly this year, it has never been more urgent," he said.

"The Post Office is correct when it says its annual volume of mail is increasing. But the annual rate of increase is down from three per cent to two per cent, and what the Post Office does not make clear is that an increase in direct mail – including what some call junk mail – is disguising a decline in domestic mail."

Postwatch said that some red boxes were receiving only a quarter of the volumes of four years ago in the face of competition from e-mails and mobile phones.

Mr Carr said Postwatch had been negotiating with Consignia for six months to put a scheme to the Regulator that would allow compensation to be paid for late or lost postal deliveries.

"The thrust of our concern is that the Post Office should be more flexible, moving away from old traditions and practices, such as the concept of postmen delivering all mail, whatever its nature, at the same time. They should get away from the 09.30 first delivery and clear the way for a flexible, market-driven service.

"Management and unions must find a way to give the Post Office the flexibility to accommodate the many niche markets by a more flexible and targeted approach to its customers' needs."

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