UK postal service not good enough admit mail chiefs
Royal Mail bosses today said their service was “not good enough” after a watchdog revealed more than a million first-class letters fail to arrive on time every day.
New performance figures for the period April 2002 to March 2003 showed Royal Mail had not met 80% of its delivery targets.
The group’s chief executive, Adam Crozier, told Channel 4 News: “We are improving and we are getting better. However, it is absolutely not good enough.
“We have a number of plans in place to solve this – it’s very important for our business and social customers that we do – and I’m confident that we can and will improve.”
Royal Mail missed almost twice as many performance targets as last year, meeting only three of 16 set for the period.
As well as failing to meet the minimum performance targets for the delivery of first and second-class post, Royal Mail also missed targets for its heavily advertised special delivery service.
Postwatch, the postal services watchdog, said that the figures would pose a problem for the regulator, Postcomm, which has already threatened enforcement action.
The independent organisation said that the results meant that more than one million first-class letters a day did not arrive on time.
Peter Carr, chairman of Postwatch, went on: “Furthermore, whilst no individual postcode area should achieve less than 90 nearly one in 10 failed even this minimum standard.
“These are very disappointing results coming at a time when customers are paying higher prices for their post.
“These targets are minimum standards and, although some progress has been made, this has been a year with virtually no strikes or severe weather conditions to hamper delivery,” he said.
The licence issued by the regulator sets a year-end target for the months of February and March. Performance was 91.7% against a target of 92.5%.
But Royal Mail says its first-class service is at its most reliable for seven years.
The average first-class mail performance is 2% higher than in the previous year.
Mr Crozier, the former head of the Football Association who joined Royal Mail in February this year, said he was trying to “turn round” the bad results.
“One letter (delivered late) is one too many and so of course there’s too many but you have got to get it into some kind of perspective – 80 million pieces a day arriving on time.
“We are improving and we are working hard to improve still further.”
A Royal Mail spokeswoman said that results, which are compiled by the group and judged on just two months of the year, were “misleading” and that the service was improving.
“We’re not saying we’ve done brilliantly but some of the targets were missed very narrowly,” she said.
“The cumulative results for the whole year do demonstrate an improvement.”
Royal Mail’s UK managing director, Jerry Cope, said the company was “disappointed” to have missed the licence target by such a narrow margin.
He admitted that there was still “much to do” but said Royal Mail has become a more stable business.
The best performing postcode area for next-day delivery was Sunderland. The worst was south-west London.
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