‘Anxious’ Royal Mail customers face missed appointments and bills

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https://www.thewestmorlandgazette.co.uk ... nts-bills/

Lengthy delays in Royal Mail letter deliveries have caused South Cumbrians to miss key hospital appointments and bills.

We have spoken to a number of local residents, from Askam to Kendal, who told of letters arriving weeks late and in large amounts all at once.

Some even spoke of going to the sorting office themselves to pick up their post.

A Royal Mail spokesperson acknowledged short-term pressures sometimes cause delays and said they are recruiting more staff locally and investing £500m nationally over five years to improve reliability.

Kit Saunders, of Kendal, is one of many who have missed hospital appointments because her letter turned up after the appointment date.

She said: “I don’t care if Royal Mail say they are understaffed, or whatever else they claim. I want my post delivered in a timely manner, not at random, and certainly not two or three weeks late.”

The 46-year-old said she recently returned home from holiday on September 20, after leaving five days earlier, to a pile of post dated the 3rd.

This included house insurance renewal letters, bank letters and even one from her dentist about changing her dental plan.

The company acknowledged that deliveries were sometimes delayed (Image: Royal Mail)

Ms Saunders said: “This has been going on for years to some degree, but it is very clear that post is now being intentionally held and only being delivered in batches.

“Why the hospital still insist on sending letters is one thing, but Royal Mail not bothering to deliver them is quite another.”

Ms Saunders, as many others we spoke to, didn’t blame her “fantastic” local posties for the delays but said “they can only deliver what they are given to deliver”.

The complaints come weeks after a retiring postman from Millom previously said late deliveries were because posties were being told to prioritise parcels.

Royal Mail said their latest figures show 84.8 per cent of First-Class letters are delivered the next working day in the LA postcode, below the 93 per cent target set by postal regulator Ofcom.


Sarah Ross, 40, of Kendal, has two young children with additional health needs and her experience of missed appointments echoes that of Ms Saunder’s.

She said: “We have a lot of hospital appointments and whenever I am aware that one is almost due, I feel very anxious waiting to see if the letter will arrive or not.

“I have had occasions in the past year when the letter has not arrived until after the appointment date and so we have missed it altogether.”

Ms Ross said, on top of this, schools are clamping down on absences and won’t approve her son’s medical absences without a named letter as proof, meaning the lack of post has caused his attendance record to fall.

“We regularly go two weeks or more with no post, and then get a bundle through all at once, dated as far as 24 days prior to delivery,” said Ms Ross.

“It is having a huge impact on people's lives, especially financially with late fees on bills and on people's health.

“Missed appointments require rescheduling at a later date, which can be a significant amount of time due to the current waiting times within the NHS.”

Ofcom, the postal regulator, launched an investigation into Royal Mail earlier this year after it missed annual delivery targets yet again.

The company has been fined £37m since 2024 for failing to meet its targets with the latest figures showing 24.3 per cent of first-class mail failed to arrive within one working day in the year to the end of March.

The same figures published by Royal Mail showed that it managed to deliver 90.2 per cent of second-class mail within three-working-days, far short of Ofcom’s target of 98.5%.

Tanya Park said her husband almost missed his cancer appointments because of the delays (Image: Submitted)

Tanya Park, 46, of Carnforth, runs her own business and said the delays have made doing so increasingly challenging.

She said: “Luckily, most of our day-to-day business communication is now done by email, but we still receive cheques, bills and important documents through the post.

“Delays can make running a business more difficult, particularly when you don’t know whether something has actually been sent or is simply sitting somewhere waiting to be delivered.”

She said the most concerning experience with the delays wasn’t business related though.

Her husband was diagnosed with cancer last year and she said important time-sensitive appointment letters for tests and treatments arrived weeks after the letter’s date several times.

Ms Park said: “After we very nearly missed one appointment because of this, we made sure the hospital also notified us of any upcoming appointments by text.

“Thankfully, that meant we didn’t actually miss any, but we shouldn’t have to put a backup system in place because we can’t rely on an important hospital letter arriving in time.”

In April, Royal Mail faced criticism as it raised the price of a first-class stamp by 10p to £1.80, the cost of a first-class stamp has more than doubled since 2020.

Ms Park said: “No other business could expect its customers to keep paying more while providing an increasingly unreliable service.

“Something needs to change, both for the customers who depend on Royal Mail and for the postal workers who are being left to deal with the consequences.”

In response to the issues raised in the article, a Royal Mail spokesperson said: “We know how important it is that customers receive their mail when expected, particularly important items such as hospital appointments.

“Mail continues to be delivered across Kendal every day, although individual routes can occasionally be affected by short-term pressures. When this happens, our teams work to deliver any outstanding mail as quickly as possible.

“We are also recruiting for a number of roles at Kendal Delivery Office to further strengthen the local team.

They added they were also rolling out a new delivery model nationally across all 1,200 delivery offices to provide a more consistent service for customers.