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Royal Mail has been accused of turning parts on Britain into “postal deserts”, with deliveries as little as just once a fortnight.
Major staff shortages, poor industrial relations, and a big work place shake up are thought to have left the delivery service unable to cope with demands across the country.
In figures which will be revelled later this week, Royal Mail is expected to confirm its annual delivery performance has sunk to near-record lows.
The anticipated poor performance results were first reported by The Telegraph, with insiders telling the publication that some places were now “postal deserts”.
Important letters are being missed because of the Royal Mail delays
PA
Dozens of areas have been affected, across the whole of the UK.
It means that households have been left without important letters such as information on hospital appointments or speeding fines as well kind cards sent for occasions such as birthdays and wedding anniversaries.
Despite the issues, Royal Mail’s overall performance is expected to have improved over the last three months.
In April union leaders agreed a pay deal with Royal Mail that brought a year-long dispute over pay to a close. There were 18 days of strikes during the negotiations.
A year-long pay dispute was settled last month
PA
A spokesman for Royal Mail said: “We are committed to improving our performance and accelerating Royal Mail’s transformation in order to restore service levels while meeting the changing requirements of our customers.
“We’re sorry to any customers who have not received the high standards they expect.
“To improve our quality of service it is vital that we modernise our network and ways of working so that we can more effectively manage the changing mix of mail in our posties’ mailbag.
“Like postal authorities around the world, we have to make changes to adapt to the reality of significant structural declines in letter volumes – which have declined by 25pc since the pandemic – alongside growing demands for parcel deliveries.”
There is speculation that Royal Mail’s chief executive Simon Thompson is currently in talks with the company about stepping down from his role.
It has been reported that the exit discussions are at an advanced stage and that his departure could come in a matter just weeks.
A decision is expected to be announced before Royal Mail’s parent company, International Distributions Services, reports its annual results on May 18.
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