EXPOSED OUR THIRD CLASS POST

THE APPALLING state of the postal system is exposed by
the Daily Mail today. A major investigation reveals that more than 14million
letters a day arrive late – or not at all. The shocking service is costing businesses millions and spoiling family occasions such as children's birthdays. Much of the disruption is due to wildcat strikes by postal workers. The damning revelations come in the week that the Post Office became a public company, now called Consignia, and was stripped of its monopoly on
letter deliveries. Rival companies can bid to set up parallel services.
To test Consignia's chances of beating off competitors, the Daily Mail
posted 2,000 letters to 40 locations all over Britain on Monday. They were
sent from 50 boxes around the country. Of the first-class mail, only 69
per cent arrived the next day, dismally short of Consignia's target of 92.5 per cent. Projected nationally, that would mean 6.5million delayed letters a day. The performance of second-class mail was also poor, with only 86.4 per
cent of even letters with postcodes arriving by the third day, against an
industry target of 98.5per cent. Overall, our survey suggests that
7.6million second-class letters a day are delivered late. More alarmingly, one in 20 of our letters had still not turned up by yesterday, four days after posting. That appears to reinforce a report last week by Postwatch, the renamed Post Office Users' National Council, that a staggering one
million letters a week never arrive. Most are either delivered to wrong
addresses or simply dumped by postmen who do not want to bother with them. During our survey there were short-lived industrial disputes in both
London and Scotland – where 5,000 workers walked out over a sexual
harrassment case – which would have affected some figures. But this was
by no means untypical. Short local strikes are happening
somewhere almost every day of the week. Astonishingly, action by postal
workers accounts for more than half the
UK's annual total of strikes. Yesterday, for example, 61 North Wales
workers staged a 24-hour strike, claiming that a colleague had been sacked because he was ill twice. MPs from both sides welcomed the Daily Mail survey and attacked Consignia's performance. Former Tory Industry Secretary John Redwood said: 'It's exactly what my constituents have been telling me. Under Labour we are going back to the Seventies, with a great national service being disrupted'. Martin O'Neill, Labour chairman of the Commons Trade and Industry Select Committee, said: 'No-one can be happy with the poor performance of the
Post Office.' He said industrial disputes were often the result of
mismanagement, but added: 'The public and the Government are becoming increasingly impatient at the inability of the Post Office to resolve these difficulties.'
Postwatch chairman Peter Carr praised the Daily Mail's investigation. He said:
'Postwatch has been highlighting the problem of late and missing
mail for a long time and we have been working very closely with the Post
Office and the industry regulator to address the problem. 'As part of
the terms of its new operating licence, the Post Office has
agreed standards of delivery which it must meet. 'These include 92.5 per
cent of first-class mail being delivered the next day. 'Postwatch will act as the independent monitor to ensure that these standards are met and will be reporting back to the regulator, who can impose
fines where the Post Office fails to meet its licence conditions.'
Consignia refused to comment directly on the Daily Mail survey, but admitted: 'Our performance has tailed off and we need to take action.' The company lost 56,000 man-days through strikes between April last year and last month.
The figure for the preceding 12 months was only 22,000 days. Comment – Page
12 [email protected] MAIL, 31st March 2001