Royal Mail fails to deliver once again

[ar4daley]

http://www.thisisstaffordshire.co.uk/Ro ... story.html

RESIDENTS and business in North Staffordshire continue to suffer one of the worst postal services in mainland Britain.

Latest Royal Mail figures show that 91.2 per cent of first-class mail was delivered on time across the ST area during June to September.

The region failed to hit both the Midlands target of 91.5 per cent and the national one of 93 per cent. Nationally just nine out of a total of 118 postcodes, including the CW area, performed worse.

However, the figures showed an improvement on the previous quarter, when 86.5 per cent of first-class mail was delivered the next day.

Nationally Royal Mail beat its first-class target with 93.2 per cent of first-class mail reaching its destination on time, and the organisation has pledged to improve the "unacceptable" performance of areas such as North Staffordshire.

A spokesman said: "A total of 104 out of 118 postcode areas hit their minimum service performance for first-class.

"However, 14 were below the minimum 91.5 per cent first-class performance. Royal Mail is doing all it can to lift the unacceptable performance in these areas."

The organisation has admitted it will be "challenging" to meet its annual targets given the scale of its reorganisation.

Paul Jobling, Royal Mail regional operations director for the Midlands, said: "While the operational changes we are making to modernise the business are being implemented in many areas without any impact on customer service, we do recognise that in some localities there has been an adverse impact on customers. We are working through difficulties in particular places."

Performance continued to improve in South Cheshire, which last year recorded mainland Britain's worst postal service when just 85.4 per cent of first-class mail was delivered on time. That rose to 89.6 during April to June, and the latest figures show 90.6 per cent of first-class mail arrived the next day during June to September.

But it remains one of the worst-performing areas, with just six postcodes recording inferior figures.

Communication Workers' Union representatives have claimed that performance in both the ST and CW areas has been hit by the closure of sorting offices in Stoke and Crewe. Sorting operations came to an end at Leek Road in Stoke in 2009, while the Weston Road depot in Crewe shut the following year.

Mail is now transported to Wolverhampton and Warrington respectively for sorting before being transferred back for delivery.

[johnsouthwales]

they knew about the crewe situation 2 years or so ago, what would they expect. if it takes an hour there an back from crewe alone, that automatically means the hour has to made up in warrington somehow, and if warrington is returning 84% of that at full capacity, still 16% missing and it's inevitable there is going to be a loss, and distribute that back down and the max figure can be 92% rather 94% so it's always going to underachieve. and more likely warrington is at 80% so that'll cut it down to 90, sigh