Related Articles
A Moray village has been ranked bottom in the north of Scotland for its tally of late letters, according to the results of a new investigation.
Our experiment, which saw people across the region send a total of 177 First Class envelopes, found that 40 per cent of letters posted from Aberlour arrived late – tied with Dingwall as the worst result overall.
Aberlour’s rate of late letters was nearly six times higher than Royal Mail’s regulator-set target of seven per cent.
Graham Leadbitter, MP for Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey, said findings reflected the fact Moray has faced years of declining postal services and “shouldn’t have to tolerate it”.
He praised the hard work of local postal staff, but argued it was clear that “resources are stretched” – resulting in “missed appointments, bills overdue, and gifts turning up late”.
Mr Leadbitter pushed Royal Mail to provide more funding for improvements to rural postal services, to ensure they are at least on a par with the Central Belt.
In response to our findings, a Royal Mail spokesperson said the company was taking “targeted action” to improve services by recruiting extra staff, simplifying its operations and rolling out a new delivery model.
The experiment
In response to concerns raised by local communities about missed delivery days and important letters arriving late, we decided to carry out an experiment.
We asked 12 people across the Highlands, Moray and Aberdeenshire to post three First Class letters a day for five days, to Inverness, Caithness and Moray.
Our senders represented communities spanning the north of Scotland, from Dornie to Banff and from Aviemore to Watten, and dropped a total of 177 envelopes in their local postboxes.
For the experiment, three of our 12 sending locations were in Moray, with volunteers in Elgin, Forres and Aberlour sending a total of 45 letters.
The final results show that ten of these letters arrived at their final destination late, once the figures were adjusted for collection time and Sunday services.
As a result, 22 per cent of letters sent from Moray were late.
That is more than three times the seven per cent target set by industry watchdog Ofcom.
Earlier this year, the regulator confirmed the standard for First Class deliveries will drop to a 10 per cent target in April – a figure still around half the result of our experiment’s findings.
However, the figures for specific sending locations within Moray highlight a wide range of results across the local area.
In total, 15 letters were sent from Aberlour with six delivered late – 40 per cent.
However, both Elgin and Forres had just two letters delivered late.
Elgin was also featured as one of our three receiving locations, with 59 letters sent out and just six arriving late.
While higher than Royal Mail’s target, the result of 10 per cent was in line with the lower target set to come into force next year.
We also ranked all 12 sending locations, based on how many letters arrived in Elgin late.
The worst performances were for letters coming from Dingwall and Aberlour, with 40 per cent missing the next working day deadline, followed by Banff and Aviemore with a figure of 20 per cent each.
However, letters posted from Watten, Ullapool, Nairn, Kyle, Inverness, Forres, Evanton and Elgin all had a perfect record.
Overall, the tally of late letters in Moray was four times lower than the result in Inverness.
‘Not enough support has been directed to rural areas’
Graham Leadbitter, MP for Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey said: “I’ve seen first hand how hard local Royal Mail staff work all year round to keep communities connected, but it’s clear resources are stretched and that not enough support has been directed to rural areas like this.
“Rural communities rely on services like this the most and already have to compete with challenges like poor to non-existent mobile signal – they shouldn’t expect the same from Royal Mail, particularly in the run up to Christmas.
“Postal delays aren’t just a headache, they’re missed appointments, bills overdue, and gifts turning up late.
“This area has had to compete with poor service for years and folk shouldn’t have to tolerate it – Royal Mail must commit more resources to our rural communities so they receive the same level of service as people in the central belt have come to expect.”
Day of the week impacted results
Which weekday a given letter was collected from the postbox also appeared to have a huge bearing on its chances of arriving on time.
The figures reveal that people keen to avoid letters arriving late should post them in time for a Friday collection.
None of the 36 letters that were collected from postboxes on Friday arrived late.
That contrasts with Tuesday, on which Royal Mail collected 30 of our letters and delivered 53 per cent of them late.
The next-worst day was Wednesday, which saw 39 per cent of collected letters arrive late in letterboxes.
Late delivery figures for Monday and Thursday collections were both below 10 per cent.
These figures were impacted by the fact no deliveries were made to our Inverness address on two consecutive days.
However, even when Inverness is excluded, 30 per cent of Tuesday collections were still late.
That is compared to nine per cent of Wednesday collections, eight per cent of Thursday collections and seven per cent of Monday collections.
‘Reliable deliveries matter to our customers and to us’
A Royal Mail spokesperson said: “We publish independently verified performance figures each quarter.
“These show 73.4 per cent of First Class mail was delivered the next working day and 96.2 per cent within three working days.
“Reliable deliveries matter to our customers and to us, and where a route is affected we prioritise any delayed items the following day to keep any impact to a minimum.
“We’re taking targeted action to improve performance, recruiting more frontline staff, simplifying operations and rolling out a new delivery model, with early pilots already showing measurable results.
“During the busy Christmas period, our teams are well prepared to keep deliveries consistent and reliable.”
Do you want to respond to this article? If so, click here to submit your thoughts and they may be published in print.
Source link
