Royal Mail postal delays ‘meant terminally ill Hull resident missed medical appointments’

A terminally ill resident of Hull missed medical appointments because Royal Mail did not deliver letters on time, councillors have been told.

The delivery of important legal documents, including some relating to house sales and wills, had also been held up, Councillor John Robinson told a meeting of Hull City Council. He called on Royal Mail to state what it was doing to improve services in the city.

The Lib Dem councillor, who represents Avenue ward, said: “Medical appointments being missed and legal paperwork being held up are resulting in people not being able to proceed with their plans in life. It makes me think of an Avenues resident who was terminally ill and missed medical appointments due to the post being late.”

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He added: “Call me old-fashioned, but when people buy a first-class stamp they should expect something to be delivered the next day. I’m under the impression that there appears to no longer be six-days-a-week coverage.

“I know we should be using emails more, but there are still a lot of people who rely on documents coming through the post. For the foreseeable future the sending of physical items through the post will be popular.”

Cllr Robinson claimed that the postal service was now so poor that council officials had to deliver documents to voters themselves during the recent Avenue by-election.

His Lib Dem colleague Cllr Alison Collinson (Boothferry ward) said her daughter had complex needs, but had also missed medical appointments due to the delays. “I know people who’ve been waiting for post that was tracked that was never delivered and now the tracking number is untraceable,” she added.

Cllr Gary Wareing, the Labour representative for Orchard Park, said the privatisation of Royal Mail, beginning in 2013, had been a disaster for postal services. He argued that the national Liberal Democrats had been partly responsible when in coalition with the Conservatives.

During the coalition government of 2010-15, the Liberal Democrat Business Secretary, Vince Cable, and the Postal Affairs Minister, Norman Lamb, had both worked to privatise Royal Mail, Cllr Wareing said. “The Liberal Democrats’ fingerprints are all over the privatisation of Royal Mail. It’s been a disaster, there’s three managers at Royal Mail earning £4m while postal workers made £12.50 an hour,” he added.

“Putting Royal Mail in private hands has damaged industrial relations, the company’s been fined for failing to meet its delivery targets. Royal Mail needs to be brought back into public ownership.”

In November last year, Royal Mail was fined £5.6m for missing first and second-class delivery targets, following an Ofcom investigation. Ofcom said that Royal Mail had breached its obligations by missing targets “by a significant and unexplained margin”, which caused “considerable harm” to customers.

Councillors backed Cllr Robinson’s motion to ask Royal Mail to lay out what it was doing to improve postal services. Royal Mail has been contacted for comment.