Royal Mail warns of severe delays as offices hit by absent workers

Royal Mail bosses are fighting to prevent a nightmare before Christmas after admitting that large swathes of the country are not receiving a normal service. 

The postal operator apologised to customers and blamed disruption to services on ‘Covid-related self-isolation, high levels of sick absence, resourcing, or other local factors’. 

Analysis reveals the number of delivery offices impacted by the problems more than doubled in a week, hitting a year-high of 32 offices last Wednesday. 

Last night, some 21 offices were still experiencing difficulties, including Bristol South, Farnborough in Hampshire and Warrington. Customers have complained of going weeks without receiving a delivery.

The company is grappling with huge volumes of parcels passing through its 1,200 delivery offices, triggered by the move towards online Christmas shopping, accelerated by the pandemic. 

Last week, The Mail on Sunday revealed that chief executive Simon Thompson had issued an urgent call to managers to hire hundreds of extra vans to deliver the parcels.

In a desperate late-night video message posted on an internal channel for its 137,000 employees, Thompson said: ‘I wanted to share something with you about delivery vans. I don’t think we’ve got this right. I think you’re short.

‘And I’ve been hearing the feedback now for too long and it’s now time to act.’ He asked employees to go to local van hire companies to source vehicles for three weeks until Christmas Eve. 

Royal Mail already has the largest fleet of vans in the country, including 40,000 of its distinctive red vehicles. 

Footage of one delivery office in the North, seen by the MoS, shows bulging grey sacks of mail messily piled high on top of each other in the afternoon when sorting offices should be almost clear. 

Royal Mail aims to clear each office of mail every day. Several employees have blamed revisions to routes for the delays. 

The company is attempting to revise hundreds of routes to make its operations more efficient and workloads fairer. 

However, one source said: ‘The revisions are delaying the post. It’s a ‘computer says no’ scenario. 

‘The technology says the routes can be done but it doesn’t take into account roadworks, traffic jams and blocks of flats with 30 addresses the posties have to get to.’ 

Senior sources denied the revisions are the cause of the delays. 

Replying to an online employee post, Thompson said, ‘I am not disputing the delays’, but insisted revisions were not the main issue. 

He added: ‘Absence [and] recruitment and at times revisions are the issue – and our number 1 problem to solve – absence – almost double 2018 at this time – and much higher then [sic] this time last year during the pandemic.’ 

Royal Mail and sister firm Parcelforce Worldwide began a drive to hire 20,000 seasonal staff to handle Christmas cards, parcels and letters in October. 

Thompson hopes to modernise the 500-year-old operator and stamp out longstanding issues over bullying within the organisation. 

The company is also still investigating claims unearthed by the MoS that fake hours are being logged by Royal Mail employees at a string of sites around the country. 

Royal Mail is already battling fierce competition from the likes of FedEx and DPD to deliver parcels for online retailers. 

The trend away from high street shopping towards ecommerce has accelerated during the pandemic, boosting Royal Mail’s profits and share price. 

The stock suffered a sell-off in autumn but has risen 12 per cent to £4.84 over the last month, since the company announced plans to hand shareholders a £400million reward through a £200million special dividend and a £200million share buyback.