Royal Mail service has improved, say Jersey Post

ONGOING problems being experienced by Royal Mail are continuing to affect the Island’s postal deliveries, but Jersey Post has reported some recent improvement to the service.

Reports from Islanders about incoming post from the UK taking five or six days to arrive surfaced last month, a few weeks after the daily mail plane service was stopped.

National media have highlighted the problems facing Royal Mail, with reports that delivery targets had been missed in every UK postcode, with blackspots in some areas putting the National Health Service under strain because appointment letters did not arrive on time.

A source close to Royal Mail was reported by The Times as saying that the next three months were ‘make or break’ for Royal Mail, after it lost a tenth of its business to rivals in a year of strikes, and suffered a £750 million loss.

Julie Thomas, postal and logistics director for Jersey Post, said the company had been striving to get to the bottom of why post coming to the Island had been taking longer.

She said: ‘We have been in dialogue with Royal Mail on a daily basis – there were teething issues with their new super-hub, but the situation seems to have improved in the last week to ten days.’

The new super-hub at Daventry in Northamptonshire handles mail from around the UK before it is sent by boat to Jersey.

Ms Thomas added: ‘We know that some of the issues are wider than the super-hub, with ongoing staffing issues affecting the collection of post and getting it to the super-hub.’

A Royal Mail spokesperson said: ‘Improving quality of service is one of Royal Mail’s top priorities and our primary focus is to restore performance and deliver the high standards of service our customers expect.

‘While the majority of mail is delivered safely and on time, service levels are currently not where we want them to be, largely due to high levels of staff absence and vacancies.

‘Across the business, plans to improve quality are already under way with targeted recruitment drives and a dedicated highly skilled performance team working with local units to improve quality.’