Royal Mail unwilling to publish details of postal offences

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ROYAL Mail bosses have refused to reveal details of the dodgy posties it prosecutes.

The Mercury submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to find out the extent of the problem after Ware postman Lindsay Gotts, of Cecil Road, Hertford, received a suspended jail sentence for cashing hundreds of pounds of other people’s Tesco Clubcard vouchers earlier this year.

We asked how many postal offences were reported to Royal Mail in the last five financial years and, of these, how many led to a prosecution by the company and how many by the police.

Our submission also requested a regional breakdown of these figures, which Royal Mail refused on the grounds it would contravene data protection.

The response read: "This is because some areas only have a very small number of incidents and release of this information would potentially result in individuals being identified."

But when asked for national figures instead, Royal Mail changed its reason for refusal.

Information rights officer Kate Fearn wrote: "We believe the requested information, if disclosed, would be likely to be misconstrued and taken out of context resulting in unfair damage to the reputation of our employees and public perception of Royal Mail.

"Disclosure of the information would therefore place Royal Mail at a commercial disadvantage to its rivals who are not required to publish equivalent information themselves.

"The interests of the public would not be served by placing Royal Mail at a commercial disadvantage. Royal Mail Group therefore believes that the overall balance of public interest is in favour of withholding this information."

Royal Mail’s transparency report states only that 312 former employees were prosecuted in the UK in 2010-11.

In England, Royal Mail is authorised to conduct its own investigations and prosecutions of postal offences, a process less than transparent than probes carried out by the police.

Ms Fearn added: "It is Royal Mail’s policy to investigate postal offences in-house and only seek assistance from the police where the specific circumstances or level of risk makes it appropriate to do so.

"Invariably, where this happens, we maintain control of the investigation and the decision to prosecute."