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West Worcestershire MP Dame Harriett Baldwin has met with the Royal Mail management team to fix what she called ‘major service issues’ which have seen local people waiting days for urgent mail.
Similar problems have been identified in other areas, including Warndon Villages in Worcester where the focus was on delays to medical correspondence, including letters about hospital appointments.
Dame Harriett said the management had denied that first class mail was being held back in Malvern and said that second class deliveries were being delayed by an average of one day to reach people’s homes.
Before Christmas, the Royal Mail blamed staff absence and unprecedented levels of parcel delivery on postal service issues. However, she said she had ben told local post is now being delivered according to its Ofcom targets.
The management said that some delays were as a result of organisations using alternative post providers to send bulk mail, which could result in delays reaching the Royal Mail delivery system.
Dame Harriett said: “I visited Great Malvern sorting office to say thanks to the posties which are doing their best to get our post to us on time and got a detailed briefing on how the local post system was working across West Worcestershire.
“The Pershore mail system seems to be working well but the Malvern and Tenbury rounds have been affected by staff illness resulting in management having to delay rounds to provide staff cover.
“The Royal Mail team is also recruiting more staff and it blamed an impasse with the post workers union which is preventing it being able to move to a sustainable business model.
“The evidence in my postbag is that people are still seeing delays, and it seems to me that the management is saying that often bulk post is getting delayed before it even reaches their sorting office.
“Combined with a decline in people using post and the higher cost of posting letters means that there is less traffic through the system which is resulting in people getting fewer letters.
“But I have urged the local management to act to win back the confidence of local people and communicate better about the challenges it is facing to get a daily delivery service across West Worcestershire.”
A Royal Mail spokesperson said: “We know how important it is that customers receive their mail as expected, particularly when it includes time-sensitive correspondence.
“Recent UK-wide figures show 92% of all letters are delivered on time and 99.4% within a week, so longer delays are rare, but we recognise there is more to do to deliver a consistently high level of service everywhere.
“Where there are local challenges, these are typically due to temporary resourcing pressures, including staff absence, and we work quickly to restore a consistent and reliable service.”
