John Slinger MP at the Rugby Royal Mail sorting office last year. | John Slinger MP
When school children forget to do their homework, they often reach for hackneyed excuses. The dog ate it, it accidentally went through the washing machine or I had a headache. A similar excuse - "the post didn't arrive" - might not wash if you missed a doctor's appointment or failed to pay money owed to the bank, yet it is increasingly what my constituents find themselves having to say. The difference is that, for them, it is not an excuse at all. Their post is genuinely not arriving on time.
They are not missing homework assignments; they are missing doctor's appointments, bank correspondence and other vital communications. The consequences are far more serious than a teacher's reprimand. For many people, they can lead to financial difficulty, stress and genuine personal hardship.
The postal service is something that we have come to expect just works when we need it, however, worryingly there is a trend where letters arrive in bulk, but only when accompanied by a tracked delivery or parcel. Something that is particularly acute in Bilton.
Constituents have let me know about some letters arriving almost a month later, for one constituent this included important letters from their bank, HMRC and pension company – all of which arrived alongside a number of other items. It is easy to see how things can go wrong, very quickly, if letters like these don't arrive on time.
When I heard about this, I immediately raised it with Royal Mail. However, their response has been unsatisfactory. They explained that letters are grouped together according to their delivery targets and delivered on a specified day. That does nothing to explain why a letter from a bank should take almost a month to reach its customer.
Customers are paying. It begs the question where does the 91p for a second-class letter and £1.80 for a first-class letter go?
I know how hard our posties work, and this isn't about them, I am more concerned about a lack of strategic planning from Royal Mail, leading to an overstretched service locally.
It is Royal Mail’s responsibility to ensure that the mail arrives on time, and if they need to invest more money to ensure that there are enough delivery rounds then they should do so. They can't just simply rely on grouping letters together to save the postie a few extra walks up a garden path.
I have raised this directly with the Minister for Small Business and Economic Transformation who is responsible for the postal service, making clear my frustration at the service constituents have been receiving.
I asked the Minister to raise the following points directly with Royal Mail:
Explain why deliveries have not been taking place in certain areas for extended periods, resulting in bulk backlogs of post;
Investigate reports that deliveries are only being carried out when accompanied by tracked items or parcels.
Ensure timely deliveries across the Rugby constituency.
Waiting almost a month in some cases for important correspondence from banks or the NHS is totally unacceptable, and I will continue to raise this issue at the very highest levels of Government. I would expect a letter to take a month to reach New Zealand which is 11,000 miles away, but when it is taking a month to travel 250 miles, I start to get concerned.
I have already written to residents concerned about this, and I will be updating them further when I receive a reply from the Government.
Because at the end of the day, within that envelope is a job offer, an appointment for that surgery that your mum has been waiting for, or a warning that you might be overdrawn – not just a missed homework assignment.
Royal Mail is now owned by a Czech billionaire. Profit should only be delivered when Royal Mail delivers for its customers. At present its not delivering the mail to my constituents or confidence to me as an MP. It's time to deliver.