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Last year, only 7-in-10 first-class post items arrived the next day in Croydon. Now, iC readers from Coulsdon to South Norwood say that their postal service has got even worse
Royal Mail’s third-class service in delivering the post to Croydon residents and businesses has now drawn a letter of complaint from one of the borough’s MPs.
Chris Philp, the Tory shadow home secretary and Croydon South’s MP, has fired off a missive to the interim CEO of Royal Mail. Though judging by the delays in deliveries round here, it could be weeks before Alistair Cochrane receives the letter.
Philp has also written to Labour’s business secretary, Peter Kyle, “to demand immediate improvement”.
Inside Croydon’s readers have been contacting us (by email, obviously, since the post is completely unreliable) over the lack of a delivery service from Royal Mail’s Factory Lane depot, which sorts post for the CR0 post code, the largest in the country, as well as serious failures for post in SE25, where post is delivered from the Holmesdale Road depot.
Philp’s letter to Kyle flags poor deliveries across CR5, CR2 and CR8, as well as CR0.
“For months, Royal Mail delivery failures in Croydon South have caused serious disruption,” Philp wrote to the minister.
“I have received repeated reports of weeks without letter deliveries, alongside growing concern about missed medical appointments and official correspondence.”
Message delivered: MP Chris Philp did not say whether he had stuck his letter to the business secretary in a Coulsdon letter box
In some parts of the borough, what is supposed – by law – to be a daily delivery service, including Saturdays, has been reduced without notice to barely one delivery every fortnight. If you’re lucky.
Royal Mail’s statutory target is that 93% of first-class mail should be delivered the next day.
For second-class items, the Royal Mail’s licence states that 98.5% should reach its destination within three working days.
According to official figures last year, only 70% of first-class mail was delivered on time in Croydon.
And there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that that woeful service has got considerably worse in the six or seven months since then.
In one instance, casual posties working in SE25 in Woodside, employed supposedly to handle the Christmas surge in postal items, were discovered to have dumped entire sacks of mail, without bothering to actually do the job they were hired to do and deliver the items.
One Christmas card, posted on December 17, was finally delivered on January 29, long after all the Christmas decorations had been taken down and boxed away.
Some in SE25 received a letter from the South Norwood delivery office’s manager apologising for the delay and damage to their post. “The matter is currently under investigation and we are taking all steps necessary to prevent a recurrence of this incident.”
It remains an offence to “interfere with the King’s mail”. Under the Postal Services Act 2000, it is illegal to intentionally delay, open or tamper with mail that is in the course of transmission. Postal workers found guilty of such action can face fines or a jail sentence of up to two years.
Royal Fail: across all Croydon, mail deliveries have become ‘ad hoc’, with some addresses only getting their post once a fortnight, if they are lucky
Even when mail bags are not being dumped, their contents are still very slow to reach their intended mail boxes. Charlie King, the chair of the East Coulson Residents’ Association, says that his members’ mail is now only being delivered on “an ad hoc basis”.
King said: “It seems to vary from no deliveries one week through one or two deliveries per week in other weeks. This is resulting in missed things like late birthday cards and personal letters, but more importantly medical appointments, bills and invoices arriving after the date they should have been paid…
“It is becoming so bad that residents are now going to the sorting office requesting their mail.”
King says that his own replacement bank card, sent first class, took three weeks to arrive at his Coulsdon address.
“What are you doing to rectify this position?” King asked Royal Mail.
Sources among Croydon posties suggest that there have been more cuts to staff, regular staff who have left have gone unreplaced, and that some sorting offices cannot cope with the workload any longer.
Inside Croydon asked the Royal Mail when they will recruit enough staff in Croydon’s postal areas to enable it to fulfil its legal duties.
Even using email, the Royal Mail’s dismal response came a week overdue.
It also included a blatant lie about how “the vast majority of mail is being delivered as planned”. They also claim to deploy “additional support” to restore regular deliveries.
One angry resident said: “Are they saying that they ‘plan’ this godawful non-service? If they do, I’d love to see where it says they can get away with delivering first-class post 15 days or more after it was sent.
“They are claiming to be trying to restore deliveries as quickly as possible – but our mail service has been dreadful for almost three months now, with no sign of improvement.”
The Royal Mail said: “We understand how frustrating it is when post does not arrive as expected, and we want to reassure people that the vast majority of mail is being delivered as planned.
“Where delays do occur, we put additional support in place and review performance daily to restore regular deliveries as quickly as possible.
“We are continuing to take action to further improve the service,” the Royal Mail spokesperson claimed.
- What’s the longest delay that you have experienced recently between a post item being sent and you receiving it?
- And if you work at any of the Croydon sorting depots, get in touch confidentially to tell us what is going on?
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ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2026, Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for an EIGHTH time in nine years, in Private Eye magazine’s annual round-up of civic cock-ups
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