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Members at a recent full meeting of Council were in full agreement that representatives from Royal Mail should be brought before ABC Council to discuss ongoing issues with late and misdelivered post.
Concerns were first raised with Armagh I five months ago, when a resident of a rural area on the outskirts of the city said her post was arriving “suspiciously late” and in bundles… as if it had been accumulating in the sorting office.
Following publication of her concerns, many others contacted their local representatives with similar complaints.
In February Upper Bann MP Carla Lockhart also travelled to London to attend a “high level” with senior management at Royal Mail to discuss – most specifically – postal delays in Banbridge, although the issues are not unique to that area.
Raising the issue towards the end of the meeting on Monday (February 23) SDLP Councillor Thomas O’Hanlon said: “I understand other representatives have raised similar problems in other places, but I want to raise the issue her tonight and ask for Members support.
I” have been contacted by a growing number of residents who are experiencing serious and repeated delays in receiving post. The most worrying aspect of this is medical correspondence arriving too late for people to attend appointments, sometimes after the appointment date has already passed.”
Sharing his own personal experience of the issues, the Councillor added: “This is not a theoretical concern. On a personal level, I recently received a hospital appointment letter dated 5th January for an appointment that had taken place on 28 January. I didn’t receive that letter until 2 February.
“This raises serious questions about what is happening to more vulnerable people in our community. Missing medical appointments has real consequences. It causes distress for patients, delays diagnose and treatment, and creates additional pressure on an already overstretched health service through wasted appointments and rebooking. Furthermore people are being dropped of waiting lists because they have failed to turn up to appointments -again through no fault of their own.
“I want to be absolutely clear that this is not a criticism of local postal workers. Our posties are clearly working extremely hard. Vans are out later each day, and staff on the ground are doing everything they can. The problem appears to be systemic rather than localised, and rooted in staffing levels, workload pressures, and operational decisions.”
The Councillor then moved to propose that Council formally engage with Royal Mail and ask them to attend a Full Meeting of Council as a matter of urgency.
“We need to seek clarity on local staffing and delivery arrangements and discuss what steps are being taken to restore a reliable service,” he said.
“I also believe there is a case for engaging with the Health Trust to ensure that urgent medical correspondence is sent in a way that reflects its importance, so that people are not missing appointments through no fault of their own. I appreciate we now have the MyCare App on our phones, but not everyone has access to this.”
Seconding the proposal, Alderman Greenfield continued: “This is an issue that has been going on and raised quite a number of times over the last few weeks especially in our own Banbridge area where after a recent meeting with the Deputy First Minister Diane Dodds MLA they have agreed that there are eight vacancies in the Banbridge area alone.”
While it is reassuring that Royal Mail have committed to expediting the recruitment process and pay overtime to current employees, the Alderman stressed the impact on local businesses and residents, with particular regards to the elderly community who are frequently missing urgent medical appointments.
“One lady spoke to myself who had 15 letters delivered in the one day, three of them from her bank to say that her bank card had been stopped because someone was misusing it somewhere,” said the Alderman. “This caused a considerable amount of stress so would certainly happily second that proposal and ask that they do come before Council.”
Cllr Ian Wilson – who has years of personal experience of working within Royal Mail – said their reasons for delays “didn’t wash” with him.
“A lot of hardworking loyal and long term staff are leaving and have already left because of the working environment and the atmosphere and what they are being asked to do. So that is causing a lot of vacancies across the country, just not in Banbridge DEO,” said Cllr Wilson.
“They are telling people that parcels are not being prioritised. I have former colleagues contacting me expressing their concerns. Tell the public that first class mail is being delivered… first class mail is only a small amount of mail that goes into every office.
“The vast amount of hospital appointments, important mail, legal documents is probably posted second class now because of the cost of first class mail. So I couldn’t agree with this proposal more that we do bring Royal Mail in here and ask questions because I’m sure, like a lot of elected members, I am inundated with people not receiving mail, people with late appointments, people missing very crucial appointments for serious medical conditions, mail being misdelivered, parcels being misdelivered to the wrong addresses, important birthday cards, birthday gifts and a different variety of stuff.
“I think a once straight service is being run into the ground.”
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