Royal Mail escapes fine for late First Class deliveries

[TrueBlueTerrier]

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Royal Mail has escaped financial punishment after failing to hit targets for delivering first-class mail.

Watchdog Ofcom launched an investigation into FTSE 100-listed Royal Mail Group’s performance in May after it self-reported that it had failed to meet the minimum required standards.

The company said it had “narrowly” missed its target of delivering 93pc of first-class post by 0.5 percentage points in the 2015/16 financial year, triggering an investigation by the industry regulator.

It noted that it beat the second-class target of 95.5pc of mail arriving within three days, delivering 98.8pc within that time.

Ofcom has the power to impose a penalty of up to 10pc of turnover from the relevant business for missing the targets – potentially putting Royal Mail in line for a £700m fine.

However, the regulator let Royal Mail off the hook, saying the business is working to address the shortfall.


Reporting its decision, Ofcom said: “We have decided not to impose a financial penalty on this occasion. In arriving at this decision we have taken into consideration in particular our finding that Royal Mail missed the relevant standards by relatively small margins and the steps taken by Royal Mail to address the issues identified as reasons for the breach.”

Announcing that it failed to hit the required standards, Royal Mail said it had been “impacted by events outside its control” such as consumers’ changing buying patterns and retailers extending the festive buying period.

Royal Mail said that the Christmas period is not included in the normal targets as the amount of post shoots up, but added the relatively recent phenomenon of consumers going online for events such as “Black Friday” to do their Christmas shopping starts before the exempt period.

Black Friday
The US phenomenon of Cyber Week is affecting Royal Mail's performance CREDIT: TPX
“Christmas activity by consumers and companies now includes Cyber Week; it has become a significant part of the festive retail calendar,” the company said.

“Cyber Week can fall within, or outside the exemption period. In 2015-16, all of Cyber Week - from Friday 27 November to Friday 4 December 2015 – fell outside the exemption period.”

The company said it is asking Ofcom to consider including Cyber Week in period exempt from the normal targets.

Royal Mail also blamed poor weather and road closures for disrupting its service, meaning it failed to reach the required standard.

A spokesman for Royal Mail said: “Royal Mail takes its quality of service performance very seriously. Our postmen and women work very hard to deliver demanding targets. We remain focused on improving and maintaining our high standards of service to all our customers across the UK, six days a week, in all weathers.”

[worktotime]

what a load of s**t , most failures are due to unmanageable workloads and posties cutting off and returning mail which is still left for the next day or the great lapsing agreement which is also returned or left in the frame till the next day , offices under staffed or leaving your parcels and pkts , they should have fined them.