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Thousands of homes and businesses in Northern Ireland are facing delays of often more than a week in having first class letters delivered, it’s been claimed.
It comes as Royal Mail warns over potential service delays across more than 100 UK postcodes as storms and workers being off sick cause disruption.
And both Banbridge and Lisburn are among 38 delivery offices in the UK that have been be most affected by a slower service according to Royal Mail.
A spokesman for the company said that “adverse weather, including storms Goretti, Ingrid and Chandra in January, alongside higher-than-usual sick absence, has caused some short-term disruption to certain routes.
“We want to reassure customers that the vast majority of mail is delivered as planned and understand how frustrating it is when post does not arrive as expected,” it said.
It added that, where delays do affect a route, it will move to bring in extra support to “restore deliveries as quickly as possible”.
But one postal worker in Banbridge told the Irish News (on condition of anonymity) that in some cases they were only delivering to addresses on one day a week such is the critical staffing situation.
“I’ve never known it to be this bad,” he said.
“And as a result of this backlog, it’s very likely that people may end up missing urgent appointment notices, bank statements, and other vital correspondence.”
The Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) says the problem stems from years of underinvestment and facilities unable to handle high parcel volumes.
Craig Anderson, the CWU’s regional official for Northern Ireland and Scotland, said postal workers always do their utmost to ensure deliveries are made on time.
“Delays in the postal service are not uncommon, and right now there are a lot of issues around staff retention and sickness absence,” he said.
“But the service has been stretched for some time, and Royal Mail needs more investment and to look at the delivery model it is putting in place, because it falls short in my opinion.”
It is understood that Royal Mail will opt to clear parcels first if they build up quickly and block walkways in delivery offices.
The company has said it is delivering more parcels as online shopping continues to grow, while the number of addressed letters going through its network is falling.
Royal Mail serves nearly two million postcodes and is required to deliver mail six days a week, and aims to deliver both letters and parcels on time.
Regulator Ofcom last year gave the go-ahead for Royal Mail to scrap second class letter deliveries on Saturdays and change the service to every other weekday.
It launched the changes across 35 delivery offices as a pilot, but has yet to expand this nationwide across all 1,200 sites due to failing to reach agreement with the staff union.
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