Royal Mail is pushing for the “urgent” implementation of changes that would see Saturday second-class deliveries scrapped, following another period of missed postal targets – as its boss admitted its delays to letter deliveries are “still not good enough”.
The postal service revealed that between 29 September and 30 November, only 91.6 per cent of second-class mail arrived within three working days.
First-class service fared worse, with just 77.5 per cent of letters reaching their destination the next working day.
These figures fall short of regulator Ofcom’s benchmarks, which mandate 93 per cent of first-class post to be delivered the following day and 98.5 per cent of second-class within three days.
While Royal Mail noted an improvement on the previous quarter’s performance, it still failed to meet these crucial standards.
Ofcom temporarily suspends delivery targets during December to account for the significant increase in demand over the Christmas period.
Royal Mail chief executive Alistair Cochrane said: “While these results show improvements for both first- and second-class mail, we recognise that our performance in letters is still not good enough.
“Unfortunately, under the current delivery model, there is no viable way to significantly and sustainably improve quality of service for customers.
“The answer is to urgently implement Universal Service reform, which is why we have now entered an intense period of discussions with the CWU to finally reach an agreement on these changes.”
The figures come as Royal Mail has been asked to respond to a group of MPs who raised concerns about “chaos” in the postal service since Christmas and suggestions that some letters are being delivered in “batches”.
The company was, earlier this week, given two weeks to respond to a series of questions put to it by the Business and Trade Committee (BTC).
It follows the postal firm issuing a notice about potential service delays across 38 of its delivery offices this week, covering around 100 UK postcodes, as a result of local issues like a higher than usual number of staff off sick, as well as stormy weather.
Ofcom last year gave the green light to Royal Mail to scrap second-class letter deliveries on Saturdays and change the service to every other weekday, starting from July 28.
Royal Mail launched second-class letter changes across 35 delivery offices as a pilot, but has yet to expand this nationwide across all 1,200 sites due to the failure to reach an agreement with the union.
It kicked off month-long intensive talks with the Communications Workers Union (CWU) at the beginning of February after failing to agree on how to roll out changes nationwide to its universal service obligation (USO).
Royal Mail said the pilots “show the model is working, with increased efficiency and improved service levels, including over Christmas when volumes doubled”.
“Given strong evidence from the pilots conducted that USO reform will result in significant and sustained improvements in quality of service for customers, Royal Mail sees no alternative to its urgent deployment across the network,” it added.
