Royal Mail is set to scrap second deliveries from next year, in a move aimed at saving the beleaguered postal service £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.
Read MoreThe number of first class letters delivered the next day has improved to more than nine out of 10, but postal group Consignia is still not meeting targets set by the industry’s regulator, new figures showed today.
Read MoreRoyal Mail came under fire from the postal watchdog yesterday, after it emerged that almost two-thirds of its services were performing less well than at the end of last year – including first class mail delivery.
The postal operator insisted that between April and June, 91.3 per cent of first-class letters had arrived the day after posting, against 86.5 per cent for the same period last year. Second-class mail deliveries, meanwhile, had beaten delivery targets.
But Postwatch said the figures showed that in a year at least 390m first-class letters would not arrive the next day. The watchdog added that Royal Mail’s results for 10 out of 16 postal services were worse now than at the end of last year.
A ROYAL Mail experiment to charge businesses for early postal deliveries has flopped, with just one firm out of 36,000 agreeing to pay the pounds 10-a-week fee.
The result came from the first of 14 nationwide trials – cutting out the second post – which was launched in Plymouth, Devon, three weeks ago.
And yesterday, Gary Hepburn, of mail watchdog group Postwatch, predicted the Royal Mail would be lucky to get more than one business in the whole country to pay up.
Postwatch has attacked Royal Mail over its controversial plan for a new pricing system, branding it both complicated and unnecessary.
The post industry watchdog voiced its disapproval of the new system, which will take into account the size of an item as well as its weight, following consultation with a range of postal users.
Peter Carr, chairman of Postwatch, says: “This is the wrong route. Royal Mail should be buying machinery that processes the larger items that customers wish to send.
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