Tag: Royal Mail

Postwatch: 2007/08: Customer expectations were not met

Posted by | May 30, 2008 | |

Royal Mail released its performance figures for 2007/08. As expected these show a substantial decline against the previous year’s record breaking performance and that the company failed to achieve 9 of the 12 minimum service targets in its licence. Royal Mail’s performance was severely affected by official and unofficial industrial action.
Millie Banerjee, Chair of Postwatch, commenting on Royal Mail’s performance said: “Royal Mail’s recovery was severely blown off course by last summer’s strikes. Figures released today confirm that customers received poor levels of service. Furthermore, the fourth quarter results show that Royal Mail’s recovery from the industrial action was in some respects disappointingly slow.

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Greater commercial freedom for Post Office Ltd

Posted by | May 30, 2008 | |

Postcomm’s Post Office Network Annual Report this year will, among other things, look at whether more can be done to give Post Office Ltd greater commercial freedom to secure new business. We believe that the right products and services to bring in customers are vital to ensure the long term future of the network after the current closure programme.

At present, Post Office Ltd has an exclusive trading arrangement with Royal Mail that restricts to Royal Mail the authority to negotiate with other operators or companies who may want to use the post office network as a collection or delivery point. Subpostmasters, in turn, have a contract with Post Office Ltd that allows them to provide postal services only for Royal Mail and Parcelforce.

In Postcomm’s view, the post office network and customers could benefit from a much more open approach than has been shown up to now in welcoming and attracting the business of other mail operators. Post Office Ltd might also benefit from greater freedom to align itself more closely with a wide range of other businesses such as local government and other community services.

The results of our work will be published as part of the Post Office Network Annual Report in October 2008.

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Royal Mail misses delivery target

Posted by | May 30, 2008 | |

Royal Mail has said it missed its key target for delivering first-class post on time in the 2007-8 financial year because of industrial action.

About 85 pct of letters arrived the next day, missing the 93 pct target.

The watchdog Postwatch said the strikes had “blown Royal Mail off course”, but it complained the service had not recovered quickly enough.

It argued that poor service should affect executives’ bonuses. Last year, the chief executive was paid GBP 3m.

The delivery of second-class letters was more reliable, according to the figures released by Royal Mail, but also fell short of the required level.

More than 95 pct of the second-class post arrived on time, compared with a target of 99 pct.

Only standard parcels beat their target for the year, with 90.4 pct arriving on time.

The company said it was working hard to improve its service and “restore the record levels seen before last year’s dispute”.
In a postcode-based list published by Postwatch, nine out of 10 letters were delivered on time last year in Twickenham, Kingston upon Thames, Luton, St Albans, north-west London and Canterbury.
While in Stoke-on-Trent, Colchester, south-west London, Oxford, Chelmsford and Dundee, only around four out of five first class letters were delivered on time.

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Royal Mail failed 75 per cent of its service targets

Posted by | May 30, 2008 | |

Official figures published last night reveal that the organisation missed nine of the 12 minimum service levels.
The reliability of the first-class delivery service fell to 85.2per cent. This was below the organisation’s target which requires that at least 93per cent of first class mail is delivered by the following day.
Royal Mail also missed delivery targets for second class post, special delivery and standard parcels, the cornerstones of the service.
However, it is clear that the business missed the crucial targets, a failure condemned by the official consumer body PostWatch.
A series of strikes over pay, pensions and working hours caused huge disruption to services during last summer.
PostWatch said Royal Mail, under Mr Crozier, had been slow to put in place a recovery plan once the dispute was settled.
Many had to find other ways to communicate. This will have reduced postal volumes, which will in turn damage Royal Mail’s financial stability for years to come.
Average daily volumes are down from 84 million items to about 80 million.
Thousands of post offices have already been closed with more to go.
The second delivery has been scrapped, while the first delivery of the day has been moved back to the afternoon for millions of homes and businesses.
At the same time collections from post boxes have been cut and Sunday collections have been scrapped.

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Royal Mail 2007-08 Quality of Service report (UK)

Posted by | May 29, 2008 | |

Figures released today by Royal Mail confirm that, as previously announced, industrial action last year damaged services for postal customers. However the 2007-08 Quality of Service report also shows that the large majority of mail, including all bulk business mail, was performing at target or above target levels as the financial year ended in March 2008.

Ninian Wilson, Royal Mail’s Operations Director, said, “The immediate objective for everyone working in the business is to deliver further improvements in Quality of Service to customers and restore the record levels seen before last year’s dispute.”

92.2 pct of First Class letters were delivered the working day after posting in the final Quarter of the year, compared to 79.3 pct in the third Quarter and 78.4 pct in the second Quarter, when industrial action first disrupted services. The dispute meant the full year First Class performance fell below target at 85.2 pct.

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