Royal Mail slated for slow deliveries

Published on Tuesday 13 May 2008 13:46

A CHRISTMAS letter posted first class to an address in Edinburgh took 12 days to be delivered by the Royal Mail, according to a new survey.

The Postwatch Scotland survey asked volunteers to look at the delivery performance of the Royal Mail over their busiest time of the year.

They discovered that across the country, just 51 per cent of first class mail was delivered the next day, while 83 per cent of second class mail was delivered within three working days.

Normal targets for the Royal Mail are to deliver 93 per cent of first class mail the next day, and 98 per cent of second class mail within three working days, although these targets are suspended over the Christmas period because of the sheer volume of mail being handled.

The survey looked at 16,433 pieces of mail across Scotland, a fraction of the 250 million items of mail delivered in Scotland over the Christmas period.

But Postwatch insisted it still highlights the poor delivery of first class mail over Christmas. In the EH area, one first class letter took a staggering 26 days to be delivered, while another letter spent the 12 days of Christmas in a Royal Mail sorting office.

A further 117 first class items took between three and five days to be delivered, and 14 items took up to nine days to be delivered.

For second class mail the results were much better, although 43 items were only received 10 days after being posted, and four items took 18 days to be delivered.

Despite this, the figures showed that across the EH area – normally one of the worst performing areas in the country – delivery was above the national performance and among the best in Scotland.

In total, 57 per cent of the 656 first class items of mail surveyed were delivered the next day, while 83 per cent of the 1250 second class items of mail arrived at their destination within three working days.

Tricia Dow, the director of Postwatch Scotland, said: "The fact that two items of first class mail spent 12 days and 26 days to be delivered is shocking, and those are the ones that have clear dates on them.

"We never expected it to be this bad."

Royal Mail questioned the worth of the study, as it only involved 217 volunteers – 42 of them in Edinburgh – but admitted that performances always dipped at Christmas because of the sheer volume of mail delivered.

A Royal Mail spokesperson said: "Mail can be delayed if full and correct postcodes are not used on mail items and we are disappointed that Postwatch hasn't encouraged customers to make this a priority when posting mail at this exceptionally busy time."