Households and businesses have been left fuming by delays in post arriving on time even though stamp prices have jumped
Royal Mail risks being hit with another hefty fine after missing letter delivery targets yet again.
The privatised postal giant confirmed that 75.7% of first class mail was delivered the next working day and 96.4% within three days.
When it came to second class, 90.2% was delivered within three working days and 98.2% within five days. The targets were missed for both those in place at the time and lower thresholds that have come into force for this year.
It means the hundreds of millions of items are failing to arrive on time, made worse by a jump in stamp prices.
First class stamps rose by 10p to £1.80 from April 7. The price of a first class stamp was just 64p in 2016 – meaning it will have increased by 181% in the past 10 years. Second class stamps went up 4p to 91p.
Royal Mail could be landed with another fine by regulator Ofcom, after it imposed a £21million penalty for missing targets in the previous financial year.
Royal Mail blamed a “challenging start to the year” and insisted things were improving. By March, Royal Mail said it was delivering 81.1% of first class mail within one working day and 90.2% of second class mail within three working days.
Tom MacInnes, director of policy at Citizens Advice, said: “It’s completely unacceptable that six years have now passed since Royal Mail last met an annual delivery target. For the company, poor performance is business as usual.
“What’s worse, Royal Mail claims people will have to wait another year until it can meet its new, lower delivery targets set by Ofcom, which came into effect last month. The light at the end of the tunnel will feel even further away for those still suffering delays, despite paying more and more for stamps.
“Things must improve swiftly for the people relying on this essential service. Ofcom can’t dish out a free pass for the company to underperform for another year – any investigation the regulator conducts into delivery failures must lead to real accountability, not just tick boxes.”
The billionaire owner of Royal Mail appeared before MPs in March where he apologised for the postal giant’s deliver “chaos”, but denied it was getting worse.
Czech tycoon Daniel Kretinsky told MPs: “Of course I am deeply sorry for any letters that arrive late.” However, he denied Royal Mail’s track record for letters arriving late was deteriorating. And, during a grilling by MPs, he said: “It is not perfect, but it is not catastrophic.”
Jamie Stephenson, Royal Mail’s chief operating officer, said: “We’re putting significant investment into improving reliability and reaching these new delivery targets, but delivering lasting change across a network of this scale takes time. Universal Service reform is a key part of that, helping us adapt the network to reflect how people send and receive mail today while protecting the one-price- goes-anywhere service for the future.
“We have a plan to deploy the new delivery model to all delivery offices across the country by the Christmas peak period and have set clear targets for each quarter as changes are introduced across the network.
“Early performance this year shows we are tracking in line with the plan and moving in the right direction.”
