Managers declaring Rural Farm Drives a HSE issue.

[Tempus Fugit]

Hello all of you,
Im new to this so please give me space and time to allow my comments become relevant. + I am a slow typer.
I recently attended a local farm whose drive is as it has been for 200 years, a little bit bumpy but totally safe, the farmers wife told me that when I was on my day off another (Unknown to them) person delivered their mail, they said that he "Drove in at great speed" and was gone as quick as he arrived; but the thing that made her comment on this delivery was the official letter that was left in her postbox.
It was a notification of intent to suspend indefinitely all deliveries to the two homesteads that they inhabit, a delivery point that has been served by RM for over 200 years.
The deliverer of this missive was my DOM whom was covering my duty on my day off.
There was a repeat letter sent to another farm nearby,(This farmer has recently spent a large amount of money making his lane a much smoother undertaking) and I think that both of these mail recipients are justifiable in complaining about the cessation of what they have legally enjoyed for over two centuries, a mail service.
I asked my DOM why he had done this and picked out these particular addresses, He retorted that these were "In his consideration" unsafe delivery points.
This in my own experience of having delivered to these types of farms for over 28 years is a deliberate attempt to obfuscate the delivery Time-Span on this duty, this same DOM told me 3 years ago that he would decrease the duty time, but more recently he has given me an Add-on of 15 minutes of which I can only preform on the odd day.
This results in me and him having to argue about why I am telling him that I am going to be late back, this got to a particularly bad juncture last week, when he asked me to step into his office (After he came to my frame and contested my reason for claiming that I would be over time) and the only reason I went into that lair was because he said, I Quote, "Or you get your coat"
So to sum up,
We here are being harassed into compliance, and the only answer is walk into unemployment.
I am a Union member, but most here aren't, so we have no representation and our views have almost no carriage.
We here are under a massive assault because the DOM sees us as a model office,
I will not give up the struggle to be represented not only for our customers but for ourselves whom present the way in which it should done.
Meanwhile, we, are being;
Done over.
Tempus Fugit.

[Lounge Lizard]

HSE issue or not, is there any guidance on how bad farm drives and tracks have to be such that you don't have to deliver there, RM van virtually wrecked after just 30,000 miles for example ?

[POSTMAN]

Will move this to blue shirts forum,welcome mate.

If you think you will be able to stand the heat why don't you contact Moya Greene our CEO at...
justsayit@royalmail.com

Or what about contacting your Area rep.

[noggin1969]

This co

[seeker019]

We have two duties covering farms in the area, most have really bad drives/tracks but we must deliver to them by the Postal License ' Every address must receive at least one delivery a day'.

Our vans have 50,000 miles on the clock and are falling apart due to the hammer they get from farm drives/tracks.

Pity RM won't get a vehicle for the job instead of cheap vans.

[axeman]

Simply not a question of having the 'van fro the job' just educate yourself and drive down the tracks at a speed that will cause the minimum of damage to the van ! this no doubt will increase your delivery time you might even have to cut off The very oposite to what these dim doms are trying to achive and yes 'seeker' is right the uso says every house must (if they have mail) have a delivery at least once a day . too stop the mail delivery to a customer is a protracted process and not simply done at the stroke of a dim doms pen

[POSTMAN]

We didn't have these problems a few years ago did we.

[axeman]

We didn't have these problems a few years ago did we.

No i dont think we did but ever increasing pressure from royal fail to push us till we drop has, no doubt the vans are going up and down these farm tracks at ever increasing speeds as all of us want to finnish and get home time to do the job properly and show them exactly how it shoud be ...no more rushing arround the roads/lanes this could well stop the onslaght dead in it's tracks

[Tempus Fugit]

This could be away of cutting hours out on rural duties , my duty is 2 villages and outlying farms. The farms although quite alot less in number may take 60% of my delivery time , none of them have drop off points at the end of their lanes. The lanes for obvious reasons are not tarmaced but are useable if you drive with care. So if a manager wants to do a "flyer" round the delivery then say all these lanes for " H&S " reasons are unfit to travel down he's save hours on my delivery or could add on another village from someone elses delivery. This could hit alot of rural offices hard with RM using the excuse of H&S to reduce services.

Tempus Fugit Says.
1/ Is this the correct way to reply?
Anyway if it isn't I'm sure someone will put me right.
So here we go, prior to these Farmers receiving these letters of "Service Denial" us in this Rural DO were informed by the inquisition that is called in RM, a 1to 1, that all the duties would be expanding and that we should expect to be given longer routes, well I am not against change and if the new methods of incoming sorted mail will provide for less inward sorting and consequently more room for longer delivery span then ok bring it on; I personally am more than happy to work my paid for hours to the full.
Alas in this SPSO as in many others, not all duties are the same with some finishing much earlier than others; He-Ho no change there then, but what rankles me more is the constant praise dished out to those who do our duties when we full timers are not present.
Generally these folk come in sometimes hours early, do no inward sorting due to their contracts and drive around like rally drivers, (with all the relevant consequences ie wrecked vans, complaints etc) my van has been involved in two major RTAs and has numerous other big dents none of which have been my fault, in fact I am an Advanced Driver and consider driving a skill, I digress.
I have been informed by the DOM that one round will ditched and absorbed into the remaining four, so seemingly we here have to take on an extra hour extra each.
I doubt that this can be achieved as we are already regularly going over and with the best will in the world how can 4 PDOs reasonably be expected to do the work of 5!!
We here have only a very few union members, most elected to leave after we were elected as a trial office for the first stage of the new revision 2 years ago, we were left alone by the union then and when we asked for guidance we were told by the union to "Trial It" so we did and after we had lost over half of our staff we were then having been trounced by management, asked to join (By the union) to strike against changes!!!! To late for us guinea pigs,when we did not we were all sent letters telling us that we had "Stabbed" the union in the back! I ask you who was stabbed first?
Hence, 90% of PDOs left the union feeling that they had been deserted in their hour of need.
Now this so called "Model Office" is being systematically taken apart bit-by-bit.
Let this be a warning to you all.
Those of us whom are still members of what I personally consider a worthwhile organization are under constant harassment, all be it clandestine. The future is writ large for us, its too late to organize and perhaps when the history of CWU effectiveness is mulled over in the future, this SPSO will be regarded of a beacon of what not to do!
So I leave you all with an illustration of how things could be for you all if you allow organizations; both friendly and hostile to determine your future.
Tempus Fugit.

[Royal_Fail]

Your DOM maybe shooting himself in foot here since we have to deliver to every address if he says you can't take van down lane park it at bottom and walk up

[Fishyfingers]

It's not only Farms that have bad roads some of the private houses i deliver to have some shocking driveways.And to be honest i think all of them should have roadend boxes.

[seeker019]

My point was cars/vans were made for roads
Farm vehicles/4x4's were made for farm tracks & field work

Sooner or later a road vehicle will be damaged beyond repair by using farm tracks everyday at what ever the slowest speed is used.
I will also bring it to your attention that in Scotland, the middle of nowhere they do use 4x4's for remote deliveries.
It is pitiful that RM is cutting time & finance by blaming farmers and H&S for the state of roads and tracks in all areas and threats of cutting deliveries if land owners cannot spend hundreds of pounds repairing drives/tracks to RM standard.

If this is the case then my duty will be destroyed in seconds.

[Brainache]

We had the same issue, but other way round.. A couple of our farm lanes couldnt be done slow and carefully- you had to take a run up and keep going and hope. We asked for the farms to have boxes at end of lane and lino agreed after trying them out himself. But what did come up was the 15 minute round trip rule - you can walk it as long as it doesn`t take more than 15 minutes. Lock the van up and go for a stroll.

[axeman]

My point was cars/vans were made for roads
Farm vehicles/4x4's were made for farm tracks & field work

Sooner or later a road vehicle will be damaged beyond repair by using farm tracks everyday at what ever the slowest speed is used.
I will also bring it to your attention that in Scotland, the middle of nowhere they do use 4x4's for remote deliveries.
It is pitiful that RM is cutting time & finance by blaming farmers and H&S for the state of roads and tracks in all areas and threats of cutting deliveries if land owners cannot spend hundreds of pounds repairing drives/tracks to RM standard.

If this is the case then my duty will be destroyed in seconds.

not all farmers drive 4x4's my guess would be the drivers are going at a fair rate of knots in order to get finished no doubt this is caused by extra work piled on and being too frightened to 'rock the boat'

[fishtank]

It's funny...you see works vans driving through building sites all day long without much of a problem....transits,combos...all the ones we use