Royal Mail set to scrap second deliveries

Royal Mail is set to scrap second deliveries from next year, in a move aimed at saving the beleaguered postal service Pounds 350m a year.

The move, which comes after a series of trials for a single delivery system, is expected to lead to a second wave of job cuts.

Consignia said second deliveries were inefficient and unnecessary. “They account for 20 per cent of the Royal Mail’s delivery costs but carry just 4 per cent of the post,” said the mail operator, which is losing Pounds 1.2m a year.

Single delivery, it said, “is the way the post is delivered in just about every other country”.

Jerry Cope, group managing director of mail services, said: “Our current delivery structure is unsustainable and we need to finance improvements for both customers and employees.”

Consignia said it had been planning to scrap second deliveries for a long time but had been waiting for the results of the eight-week pilots.

Second deliveries were replaced in the 13 test areas by a single delivery between 7am and 9am for business addresses and between 9am and noon for residential mail.

No figures were available from the trials yesterday, but Mr Cope said: “Our customers have been flexible and willing to adapt to the changes we’ve piloted and we have learnt a huge amount about what works – and what doesn’t.”

However, the Communication Workers Union said the trials had failed business, customers and staff.

Customers, it said, “have received an irregular, totally unpredictable service, which, in many cases, has seen mail being delivered to their house at any time of day”.

It added that staff at the trial sites “experienced a dramatic increase in fatigue, sickness and stress”.

New single delivery patterns were expected to start rolling out across the country in the new year and could be completed within 18 months, Consignia said.

However, Postwatch, the industry watchdog, raised concerns about the timing of the scheme’s implementation. The pilots, it said, were originally planned for February and the roll-out programme was to start this month.

Peter Carr, chairman of Postwatch, said deferring the roll-out of the new delivery arrangements “could add to Consignia’s financial problems as savings of Pounds 350m were expected from changes to delivery patterns”.

An industry insider said Consignia was dragging its feet on the issue of second delivery because it was afraid of union action ahead of the Christmas holiday period.

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