MPs press Royal Mail to explain 'chaos' in deliveries across UK - with Banbridge and Lisburn impacted
Royal Mail has been pressed to respond to a Westminster committee which has raised concerns about “chaos” in the service - with Banbridge and Lisburn among areas currently suffering.
The company has told the News Letter this can be caused by temporary factors such as sickness absence or resourcing pressures.
However Upper Bann MP Carla Lockhart has pointed to strategic management as being to blame.
Royal Mail has been given two weeks to respond to a series of questions put to it by MPs on Westminster's Business and Trade Committee (BTC).
The letter, addressed to Royal Mail’s interim chief executive Alistair Cochrane and sent on Monday, followed warnings that stormy weather and staff sickness were causing some disruption to its service.
The BTC raised “significant concerns about the quality of the postal service being provided by Royal Mail”.
It cited 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.
“This chaos has continued into mid-February, well beyond the predictable pressures of the Christmas period,” the letter read.
According to the Royal Mail website this includes postcodes BT32 in the Banbridge area and BT26-28 in Lisburn.
The BTC, a cross-party group formed of 11 MPs chaired by Liam Byrne, also raised suggestions that “in some cases Royal Mail deliberately chooses not to deliver letters until a ‘batch’ of mail is ready to be delivered to that address”. “This alleged practice of ‘batching’ letters, if true, clearly risks customers missing important time-sensitive information such as medical appointments, as well as impacting upon Royal Mail’s delivery performance.” A report in the BBC on Monday found some letters were being held in delivery offices for weeks, leaving people to miss urgent mail such as appointment notices and bank statements. Royal Mail has said organisations sending high volumes of letters, such as banks and the NHS, are increasingly using a service that delivers mail five days after posting, rather than opting for first or second class.
Lagan Valley Alliance assembly member (MLA) Michelle Guy said she was meeting Royal Mail about the issues.
She said: "I've been hearing from people for months now on this issue, it got particularly acute now after Christmas." The Lagan Valley MLA added that she was "overwhelmed" with responses when she asked constituents about the scale of the issue. She said people were not receiving "vital correspondence" such as hospital appointments and bank cards and it was "having a real impact on people's lives". Upper Bann MP Carla Lockhart had a high-level meeting with senior management from Royal Mail in London earlier this month, driven by serious and ongoing concerns about postal delays in Banbridge and across Upper Bann.
She said hospital appointment letters are often sent as economy mail, “which can sit for a period of time before even entering the delivery system”, which she is taking up with Health Minister Mike Nesbitt. The problems lay with senior management and not "our posties".
“My concerns are directed at senior management and the strategic direction they have taken the business,” she said.
She has been “holding Royal Mail’s feet to the fire” on staffing levels, contracts and conditions, she added.