The Royal Mail crisis

I have been running an online campaign locally about the deterioration of Royal Mail services which has attracted a lot of support from others.   I would often go ten days without a delivery and then fifteen to twenty items would arrive, some of them time sensitive.

I eventually managed to contact the office of the chairman/CEO's office at Royal Mail and to be fair they contacted me by phone and by email and I suspect that they gave local management a bit of a kick up the backside.   Deliveries have improved.

In response they said: 'I have contacted the Manager at Leamington Spa Delivery Office who has advised they have had issues with deliveries due to high sick absence running at 20% as well as twelve vacancies they have at present.  Your delivery round is not getting fully delivered daily and they are working on ensuring there is a rotation on the delivery round to ensure mail is delivered every other or third day.'  [Clearly this was not happening].

Royal Mail is actively recruiting for these vacancies and once these vacancies are filled and staff return to work there will be an improvement in deliveries.   [One person locally alleged that these vacancies were not advertised and they had tried to obtain a position without success].

On the phone I was told that 'no one wants to be a postman any more', but perhaps the pay and conditions need to be better for a job that takes you out in all weathers and can involve meeting unfrienly dogs.

Ofcom is currently running a consultation on the future of the universal delivery obligation.   Royal Mail points out that we are posting fewer letters (of course, they keep putting the cost up).   They would like to remove the Saturday delivery and deliver second class mail every other day.

Some argue that Royal Mail should never have been privatised, although the example of the Post Office and some local authorities suggests that public sector managers are not necessarily better.   My hunch would be us that it is not a sector that attracts the best managers.

I think thare are a number of solutions rathe than a further deterioration in service, although cynically it could be argued that poor service plays into Royal Mail's hands as an every other day service would be better than what I have been getting.

One solution would be to recognise that there is a social element to the service and pay a subsidy for it as happens in France.

Another would be to allow customers to pay for a better service.   I don't want to read my news magazines digitally and buying them from the newsagent would mean a loss of discount (for newspapers I get vouchers).  So I would not lose out much if I had to pay for a six day a week service.