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Royal Mail letter post/Christmas card deliveries in December 2023.

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Xenophon PCDGS

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Mindful of the fiasco in December 2022, when Royal Mail managers were accused of telling sorting office staff to prioritise parcel deliveries and many Christmas cards and letters were being put aside on a daily basis and not being delivered until January 2023, I wonder if the same scenario will be revisited in 2023. Every year, the Royal Mail print special Christmas postage stamps, the annual cost of such charges having been increased many-fold in recent years and of course there is still the "obligation" on Royal Mail to meet its "postal delivery obligation" which I assume is still in force.

I opened a similar thread to this in 2022 when matters seemed unusual for the first time of such occurrreence and whilst admitting that the sending of Christmas cards is now seen as one of the traditions of the more elderly of the population, I am sur that Royal Mail would not go to the trouble to produce dedicated Christmas stamps if the demand was seen as poor.

If any website member has any views on the matter, this is the thread to express themselves upon.
 
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Well as this story takes prominence in the Mail, the facts and reality may well be entirely different. A useful distraction for the Mail given other, far more important matters, taking place in UK politics at the moment.
 

Xenophon PCDGS

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Well as this story takes prominence in the Mail, the facts and reality may well be entirely different. A useful distraction for the Mail given other, far more important matters, taking place in UK politics at the moment.
I was unaware that any newspaper was currently carrying the storyline. Why I opened this thread was to see if what actually happened in 2022 occurs again in 2023.
 

jfollows

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I have read newspaper reports (in recent weeks, but I can't quote them now) to the effect that prioritising parcels over letter mail has effectively become a standing instruction by Royal Mail management, not one restricted to the Christmas period, so I would not be surprised to see a repeat performance this year of poor delivery of cards and other mail. Mine were posted a week ago with that in mind.
 

Xenophon PCDGS

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Does anyone know if the Royal Mail has had any recent change made to its status as a universal postal service that comes under the terms of the Postal Services Act. If that still remains the case, would edicts from Royal Mail management to ignore the terms of the said act and could the Royal Mail suffer financial sanctions as a result?
 

jon81uk

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Does anyone know if the Royal Mail has had any recent change made to its status as a universal postal service that comes under the terms of the Postal Services Act. If that still remains the case, would edicts from Royal Mail management to ignore the terms of the said act and could the Royal Mail suffer financial sanctions as a result?
They already have been fined by Ofcom.
 

Trackman

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With parcels, As I understand, Royal Mail have something in place with Amazon.
I wonder if this is why they made parcels priority? (income/risk of fines)
 

david1212

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I have read newspaper reports (in recent weeks, but I can't quote them now) to the effect that prioritising parcels over letter mail has effectively become a standing instruction by Royal Mail management, not one restricted to the Christmas period, so I would not be surprised to see a repeat performance this year of poor delivery of cards and other mail. Mine were posted a week ago with that in mind.

Most parcels sent by businesses using Royal Mail now are Tracked 24 or Tracked 48 either just a photograph on delivery or with a signature required.
Further some business offer next day even for orders placed in an evening. Where these are not received at the delivery office until after the normal round has been sorted a second run has to be made.
For all of these there is a service commitment hence prioritised.

If left too long even unaddressed marketing leaflets can apparently be prioritised.

As individual items online or over-the-counter first and second class including Signed For have no commitment. Only Special Delivery has a next day commitment, earlier or Saturday if an additional charge is paid.

Further tracked items are scanned when paid for or handed over at a Post Office. First and second class items paid at the counter with an individual QR coded sticker rather than a stamp logically are recorded to. Stamped items though will not be recorded until the first sorting office scan. A sack of these can sit for several days yet for first class if delivered the next day after the first scan it will count towards the Ofcom rule requirement to deliver 93% of first class mail within one working day even though posted several days earlier.

Posting number #6 gives some information on the fines imposed upon Royal Mail by Ofcom.

I guess the local managers are instructed to do whatever will result in the lowest fines.


All my Christmas cards are ready to post tomorrow which gives 10 working days up to 22nd December.
 
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Xenophon PCDGS

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I guess the local managers are instructed to do whatever will result in the lowest fines.
On a legal basis, how would Royal Mail fare for such a stated deliberate disregard that you mention above for the service delivery terms stated in the Postal Services Act and would Ofcom also view that matter as something most serious in nature, noting the size of the imposed fines already given in the past to Roal Mail.
 

Ken X

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We have been monitoring our postal deliveries this month.

So far we have received post on Sunday 3rd December.

Er...that's it

Makes us wonder if we are getting the service promised or have no friends :lol:
 

GCH100

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There was a news item about this on North West Tonight, the regional BBC News for North West England, last week, It talked about the postal service currently in the Cheshire town of Winsford, Basically what was happening were that if people had letters posted, they had basically decided to go to the delivery office, because they weren't receiving them. Royal Mail admitted at Winsford that it prioritised Parcels over Letters, and I have heard this before. It also said afterwards that they had recieved several emails, stating the problem was rife and similar elsewhere and people were not receiving cards and letters, and BBC North West Tonight siad they may revist the story.

This is a link to the story:-


It also looks like similar is happening in South East England:-

 
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Busaholic

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I can't answer the question posed, but can only provide evidence of my recent experience. Last Tuesday around midday I telephone ordered two packets of narcissi to be sent first class post from the Isles of Scilly to two separate addresses in London, both arriving the following morning. Last year, one took a week, the other arrived bedraggled after about three weeks, and after Christmas, so there was certainly great improvement. I suspect many fewer Christmas cards will be sent because of the huge increase in the cost of stamps.
 

david1212

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Today at work we received a Tracked 48 small parcel containing an order placed last Thursday. Following the supplier website it was not shipped until Friday so had it not delivered until tomorrow would still have been on time.
Go back several years, before Tracked 24/48, from this supplier the despatch would have been second class or second class signed for. In December it was normal for delivery to take a week, the only way to ensure 2-3 working days was to pay a supplement for a courier.

So far I have received 8 cards out of around 15 including one from Canada, unfortunately I can not read the Canada postmark date. It seems people are posting earlier. Time will tell if the remainder are delivered by 23rd. Last year I did not receive one so either not sent or lost in transit, and I recall one not received until 29th or 30th.
 

Xenophon PCDGS

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Today at work we received a Tracked 48 small parcel containing an order placed last Thursday. Following the supplier website it was not shipped until Friday so had it not delivered until tomorrow would still have been on time.
Go back several years, before Tracked 24/48, from this supplier the despatch would have been second class or second class signed for. In December it was normal for delivery to take a week, the only way to ensure 2-3 working days was to pay a supplement for a courier.

So far I have received 8 cards out of around 15 including one from Canada, unfortunately I can not read the Canada postmark date. It seems people are posting earlier. Time will tell if the remainder are delivered by 23rd. Last year I did not receive one so either not sent or lost in transit, and I recall one not received until 29th or 30th.
The matter of parcel deliveries being on time would suggest that priorities to parcel deliveries by Royal Mail is confirmation of the current Royal Mail scenario reported in the Winsford sorting office. Normally, I would have received at least 10 Christmas Cards by the 11th December from friends and family who always post in the last week of November, but to date, I have received three.
 

SteveHFC

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Postal deliveries here (Luton) seem to be ok at the moment. Cards are arriving within a couple of days of being posted second class. Last year we'd received hardly anything until a few days before Christmas and were still receiving cards well into January.
 

Ken X

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We have been monitoring our postal deliveries this month.

So far we have received post on Sunday 3rd December.

Er...that's it

Makes us wonder if we are getting the service promised or have no friends :lol:
An update :)

We have just had our second delivery of December today, the 12th. Three cards and a wodge of junk mail.

It's not going well.

On the plus side it's less cards to recycle next year.
 

jfollows

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Friday now, one Christmas card by post so far - from my financial adviser - and two posted through the letter box by the sender. Oh yes, plus one from the USA. That's it. I'd have expected more by now - we send something like 28 I think so I'd normally expect roughly the same number in return. Maybe 15 will arrive in tomorrow's post?
 
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PeterC

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Looking at the franking on today's mail my cards are taking 2 to 3 days. (Coming through Home Counties North)

Before covid I was involved in sending regular mailings and packets by Royal Mail. Overall I classed the service as excellent but there were individual locations that could have problems and when they did they were seriously bad.
 

duncombec

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I think national coverage is only just starting to take off, but there has been pretty in depth coverage in local areas affected. For example, here, it's been covered on the local radio station and in(on) the local newspaper('s website), including an interview with a necessarily anonymous postie who says he's "ashamed to wear the uniform". The local MP has also picked up on it, and apparently local hospitals are now phoning regarding appointments, even weeks into the future, because of a significant increase in people not arriving because the letter hadn't turned up. The very same happened to my father - it turned up the day after he was meant to have gone (and did go, thanks to one of said phone calls!).

I've had a grand total of four postal deliveries since November 1st, my last, and only one this month, on 5th December. Weekly deliveries such as the TV magazine are regularly arriving in pairs - one of which usually days into validity - and it took 9 days for a letter posted four miles away to wind its way through the system. There was a note scribbled on it that access couldn't be gained after day 6, but I don't believe that for a second, given the chances of all six people in this building being out and unable to answer the entryphone being infinitesimally low, given one is 89 and usually only goes out on a Sunday morning! (And even that is only needed after a certain time).

Apparently, Royal Mail have increased the size of the rounds to a degree impossible to do in the time allocated, as well as postal staff (for many years now) having to sort their own mail before delivering it. There is no cover as soon as someone goes off sick, so mail just gets left in the sorting office... which is only open for 2 hours a day, so you can't go and pick it up yourself either!

I wonder if the fact you don't seem able to contact Royal Mail by post is perhaps a sign of how confident they are in their own service?
 

DelW

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Friday now, one Christmas card by post so far - from my financial adviser - and two posted through the letter box by the sender. Oh yes, plus one from the USA. That's it. I'd have expected more by now - we send something like 28 I think so I'd normally expect roughly the same number in return. Maybe 15 will arrive in tomorrow's post?
I've had 10 personal cards through the post, of about 25 I'd usually expect, plus two from organisations that probably posted them early. Where the franked date was legible, they've mostly taken around 3 days on a second class stamp, which seems reasonable. Obviously I've no idea how long the unfranked ones took.
Weekly deliveries such as the TV magazine are regularly arriving in pairs - one of which usually days into validity - and it took 9 days for a letter posted four miles away to wind its way through the system.
My regular weekly news magazine has arrived about on time for the last couple of weeks (on the Friday of its publication week), including today. Earlier in the autumn there were occasions when it was up to a week late, and two issues never arrived at all.
 

Busaholic

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I received today a monthly tram magazine I've subscribed to for the last twenty years, which has never arrived more than a week late: the same applies to a London bus magazine over a much longer period. Maybe I get a better service than many, perhaps aided by being in the centre of a town about a quarter of a mile from the Sorting Office.
 

david1212

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Looking at the franking on today's mail my cards are taking 2 to 3 days. (Coming through Home Counties North) ...
.... Where the franked date was legible, they've mostly taken around 3 days on a second class stamp, which seems reasonable. Obviously I've no idea how long the unfranked ones took.....
..... plus the number of days between collection and franking.

.... Apparently, Royal Mail have increased the size of the rounds to a degree impossible to do in the time allocated, as well as postal staff (for many years now) having to sort their own mail before delivering it. There is no cover as soon as someone goes off sick, so mail just gets left in the sorting office... which is only open for 2 hours a day, so you can't go and pick it up yourself either!
If/when a round is not completed the logical approach would be the next day to start at the other end or in some other way prioritise the part not served because out of time.
The massive reduction in the number of days and the hours when mail can be collected ought not to be allowed. It should be every day except Sunday and if it really has to be just 2 hours these should be varied e.g. if 8:00 - 10:00 one day 16:00 - 18:00 the next day.
 

DerekC

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In the course of going through boxes of stuff in my old house, prior to moving to a smaller one, I found a letter from my grandmother living in Ruislip to her brother living on Oldham, written in the 1920s. It says that she has been checking the postal deliveries against the postmark. If he posts a letter before 8pm it will arrive by first post next day. If he leaves it until 10pm it won't get there until second post. I find this quite mind boggling!
 

GusB

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I had two Christmas cards delivered this morning. One was for me and the other was clearly marked for the house two doors down. I'll post that one through their letterbox tomorrow.

I also received my regular bank statements as expected, so I suspect the OP is making mountain out of a molehill, as he tends to do.
 

mm333

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It definitely seems like they were holding cards. It was my partner’s birthday on 1 December. She got one or two cards in the post early, nothing on her birthday or shortly afterwards and then 12 birthday cards arrived on the same day on 6 December.
 

greatkingrat

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I had two Christmas cards delivered this morning. One was for me and the other was clearly marked for the house two doors down. I'll post that one through their letterbox tomorrow.

I also received my regular bank statements as expected, so I suspect the OP is making mountain out of a molehill, as he tends to do.
I don't think that is fair. Just because some areas (including yours) are receiving a pretty much normal service, doesn't mean everywhere is.
 

Ken X

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I don't think that is fair. Just because some areas (including yours) are receiving a pretty much normal service, doesn't mean everywhere is.
I would concur with this.

I had a chat with our postie, who is a very long serving, always cheerful and chatty individual. He is royally cheesed off with the system he's working with and fustrated he is not able to provide the service he wants to. I suspect retirement is imminent.

Another ex-postie on our allotments finished last year and his view is that the bias towards parcels and tracked 24/48 small parcels is to the detriment of the regular post. He says he was abandoning regular post to drive all over the area delivering the tracked mail, as the managers decreed this was the priority at the time. He suspects nothing has changed.

It would seem that the Royal Mail is in need of an in-depth analysis of its aims and objectives. What the answer is I have no idea, but the status quo is not a viable option, given the inevitable change in society's methods of information transfer and the costs incured in achieving the various services. Interesting times.
 

317 forever

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On Monday I posted some Christmas cards 2nd class to other areas of Manchester and to Hampshire.

At least one of the Manchester ones arrived on Tuesday, but the Hampshire one hadn't arrived by Wednesday.
 

jfollows

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I would concur with this.

I had a chat with our postie, who is a very long serving, always cheerful and chatty individual. He is royally cheesed off with the system he's working with and fustrated he is not able to provide the service he wants to. I suspect retirement is imminent.

Another ex-postie on our allotments finished last year and his view is that the bias towards parcels and tracked 24/48 small parcels is to the detriment of the regular post. He says he was abandoning regular post to drive all over the area delivering the tracked mail, as the managers decreed this was the priority at the time. He suspects nothing has changed.

It would seem that the Royal Mail is in need of an in-depth analysis of its aims and objectives. What the answer is I have no idea, but the status quo is not a viable option, given the inevitable change in society's methods of information transfer and the costs incured in achieving the various services. Interesting times.
I agree.
To me, the most important things delivered by post are letters, because they're bank statement, letters from my doctor, allegations of speeding offences, pay slips, credit card statements, and similar things.
Parcels are usually tracked and known about. They are only prioritised because of "targets" which inappropriately make them get delivered at the cost of more regular mail.
I want to receive "regular post" promptly because it's the stuff that matters most to me. The other stuff is important but not as vital. I get my prescription medicine delivered by post, but I can track it, and a day or so either way doesn't matter to me, but because it's posted "Royal Mail 48" or whatever they're under an incentive to meet targets for its delivery. All well and good, but not at the cost of regular mail, which seems to be the case. I'm having to print my own credit card statements myself now because their delivery is unreliable. Not good.

Today's Sunday Times (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/...tion-sorting-office-parcels-letters-2x3cfkmnk) reports on this, and I don't think many people will be surprised.
Essentially Royal Mail had a near-monopoly which made it ideal for parcels, but it squandered this, and is now playing catch-up at the expense of the really important stuff.
Its management needs to be sacked.
INVESTIGATION

Undercover at Royal Mail: ‘Never mind the letters, just take the parcels’
Why is so much post delivered late? Our investigation shows how urgent reminders and NHS appointment letters are left on the shelf​


Louise Eccles


Dominic Hauschild

Saturday December 16 2023, 11.59pm, The Sunday Times

At a Royal Mail sorting office in Southampton, a long-serving postman grumbles to a new colleague about how gruelling the job has become. There are dozens of parcels to carry on every postal route.

What happens, asks the fresh recruit. “Does that mean you have to leave the letters back here, and just take the parcels?”

“You’re not supposed to,” the postman explains. “It’s illegal.”

“So that doesn’t happen?”

“Oh that definitely does happen. More often than what it should do. But yeah, no, it is against the law, and they shouldn’t be doing it.”

What the postman does not know is that his colleague is an undercover reporter for The Sunday Times.

An investigation has found that postal workers are being forced todeliver parcels ahead of letters — leaving first-class letters, bills, government correspondence, fines and hospital appointments abandoned in the depot. Royal Mail has a legal obligation to offer to deliver letters every day — Monday to Saturday — to every street.

Journalists working as postal workers in sorting offices in London and Southampton were told by managers and postal workers that parcels were routinely being prioritised over less profitable letters. Senior bosses at Royal Mail have been insisting there is no central policy of prioritising parcels over letters.

Last year’s financial results for Royal Mail show that it delivers 1.4 billion parcels in the UK and almost eight billion letters, but it received £4.8 billion in revenue from the parcels and £3.7 billion from letters. Losses are growing — to £319 million in the six months to September, after a dispute with staff over pay and working conditions.The price of a first-class stamp has recently risen to £1.25 — the third increase in 18 months, which Royal Mail has blamed on cost pressures and the fact that it must deliver letters six days a week.

Undercover footage from sorting offices shows how at the end of each working day in the run-up to Christmas some streets still had piles of post waiting to be delivered, but no parcels.

Residents in these roads said hospital appointments had been missed because of the delay in getting letters; others refuse to buy first-class stamps because it takes so long for post to arrive. We were told the post had not been delivered for three days in some streets.

Complaints are mounting about the consequences of delayed post — with fines, birthdays, legal letters and financial payments being missed.

Asked why only the parcels had been delivered but not the letters, one postal worker in Wandsworth, south London, said: “You’d have to ask Royal Mail that. They prioritise parcels. They’re not supposed to but they do prioritise parcels.”

Another postman said: “If you know you might not complete [a round], what you need to do is bring it back [to the depot] or they will decide what to take out. Leave the letters, take the parcels today. They will let you know that.”

How the rules have changed

Royal Mail says it is not illegal or against the law to clear parcels before letters when necessary to do so, adding that there are times when it has to make a conscious effort to prioritise parcels during peak periods. It says this is not the position across the board. It noted that Ofcom, the regulator, “did not identify any suggestion that senior management had directed the prioritisation of parcels”.

It is under pressure from rivals such as Evri and DPD and has made no secret of its plans to become a parcels-focused business. It is trying to modernise, but has also been cutting costs. Since September last year, Royal Mail has reduced its workforce by 9,000 people including 2,000 redundancies.

However, a condition of its privatisation in 2013 was that it must offer to deliver letters to every address in the country six days a week for the same price, and parcels five days a week. This universal service obligation is governed by the Postal Services Act 2011 and the universal postal service order set out in 2012 to ensure that vital letters from the NHS, government bodies, banks and utility companies are not left waiting.

Last year Royal Mail asked the government to release it from its obligation to deliver letters six days a week, scrapping Saturday deliveries. Ofcom is reviewing this requirement.

While Royal Mail awaits the outcome, its senior management has insisted that letters are not being sidelined. However, residents say Saturday deliveries have in effect been axed in their area and that they receive their post sporadically.

Managers at delivery offices cite staff shortages, high sickness rates, a lack of space for piles of parcels and a reluctance among new staff and some existing workers to make their rounds on foot to deliver letters, rather than deliver parcels using vans. Postal workers say traditional walking postal routes have got longer because they deliver so many small parcels. They take longer to deliver because many have to be handed over in person, rather than put through a post box as letters are.

Royal Mail admitted in its latest financial results that it had become overreliant on casual agency staff and pledged to recruit more permanent workers again. Last month it was fined £5.6 million by Ofcom for failing to meet its first and second-class delivery targets in the 2022-23 financial year. Just 89 per cent of delivery routes are completed daily, when it should be 99.9 per cent. These performance targets do not apply during December, however.

Hired within hours

To find out what happens inside a sorting office, two reporters applied for the job of “postperson with driving” advertised on the Royal Mail website. One applied at 9.53am, and by 2.31pm that same day was made a conditional job offer over the phone. The other was offered a conditional job offer less than five minutes into a phone interview.

Full-time postal workers normally wear a uniform including T-shirts, jumpers, trousers and shoes but both reporters were told that they should turn up to work in their own clothes to begin with. This is because the turnover of new staff is so high. If new recruits were still there after about ten days then they would be allowed to order postal workers’ uniforms.

Almost from the first moment that new employees start, Royal Mail makes its business priorities clear. At its induction training course a video said: “We’re transforming into a parcels-focused company because we want to be the carrier of choice for the UK.”

Trainers on the course talked about the importance of large retail customers including Boohoo, Apple and Amazon. One trainer said: “These are quite well-known household names and, our strategic account team, they currently have over 200 customers who spend a significant amount of money in Royal Mail every year so it’s important that we ensure we provide them really, really good service. Not just to these customers, but to all our customers, but as I say these are some of our key, branded loyal customers.”

Just 24 hours after their employment started, one reporter was sent out on a postal round with a more experienced postman delivering small parcels and letters, including bills, government documents and greetings cards to hundreds of addresses. Another was given a fluorescent orange hi-vis Royal Mail vest and a red satchel after 48 hours and sent out to help deliver mail. All the post is put in a red trolley and the red satchels are filled up with the post a few streets at a time.

The day began in south London at 7.30am in the noisy sorting office, emptying huge postbags and filling up the large shelves, known as frames, for a particular group of streets in order of house number. Parcels had to be piled high, at the top of the racks, and would sometimes tumble to the floor due to the tiny space available.

Permanent postal workers had their own round and took pride in getting the work done quickly. After filling the frames, the postmen would then empty the shelves of letters and parcels, loading up their red trolleys and bags. Each had their own system for ensuring that the parcels and letters were easy to grab, in strict order, on their rounds. The postmen who go out on foot take smaller parcels and letters, the larger ones are given to different postal workers in vans.

Reporters were told that if they had too much to deliver, they should ask a manager who would let them know whether to bring it back or “leave the letters, take the parcels ”. If there was no assigned postman for a route, or the postal worker was off sick, those letters would not be delivered; parcels, we were told, usually would be because they built up quickly in the sorting office.

The job of postman involves walking 8 to 12 miles a day in all weather — in excess of 20,000 steps a day. A full-time salary is between £25,000 and £30,000 depending on the location.

The most experienced postal workers knew which houses had dogs that jumped up at the letterboxes, or slippery stairs; which homeworkers were most likely to take a parcel in for their neighbours, and which elderly customers were slow to come to the door and needed more time. Everyone is pleased to see them, and the regularly people stop to say hello — some residents panicked at the sight of two new employees, asking if their favourite postman was retiring.

The toll on workers

It was at the end of the day in the sorting office where the pressures became clear. Postmen are expected to finish their rounds by 3pm, at which time the racks should be cleared of all letters and parcels.

In both sorting offices at the end of the day there were some racks full of letters. Conversations in staff rooms revolved around the workload and whether people had been able to complete their round.

In Southampton, one postal worker who had been employed by Royal Mail for more than two decades described how the pressures of the job had grown in the past three to four years as they now had “tons of parcels”. He said “You’re still having to walk the same distance … So to add the parcels then adds time to the staff.”

One new recruit quit after a short stint working in Wandsworth. He left his new uniform, which he had received one week earlier, in a bag in the manager’s office. Asked why, a manager said many recruits wanted the life of parcel couriers, working from vans, rather than door-to-door letter deliveries.

When a manager in Wandsworth was asked about the full racks of mail that could be seen at the end of a shift, she blamed some workers who she said had been had been employed as postmen walking postal routes but had “given the impression” they were only there to deliver parcels in vans.

One round of streets apparently had no permanent postal worker assigned to it. A postwoman stacking letters into the already-full racks, said: “There’s no one on it, that’s why it’s so full … It was getting split up and everyone was taking a piece of it. But because it’s Christmas now, it’s too busy, so we are not taking it any more. That’s why there’s no one on it to actually do it.”

The toll on you: ‘Mum missed three hospital appointments’

Local residents say the postal delays are having an impact on their lives. In Wandsworth, one woman on a street where letters had been left on the frames in the sorting office said: “Our post is very sporadic. I haven’t had any Christmas cards yet and I probably won’t send any because stamps are so expensive and they’ll probably arrive late anyway. My mother missed a hospital appointment the other day because the letter arrived the day after the appointment. That’s happened three times.”

Clifford Bird, 78, a retired postman who lives in the Regents Park area of Southampton, said he refused to buy first-class stamps because the post was so slow. He said: “We do get everything eventually but they might take three or four days. We just wait and hope they arrive. NHS appointments, birthday cards, all sorts arrive late. We don’t get mail on Saturdays any more.”

Postal delays are affecting other areas too.

In Colchester, Essex, one customer approached her postman when she did not receive any cards on her 94th birthday. The postman said: “It is heartbreaking. I went back to the depot that evening and went through 23 boxes of post to find her cards and made a special trip to deliver them to her the next day. It’s just not fair. It’s not right.”

Residents in Liverpool and Plymouth have complained of missing hospital appointments. Courts are facing a glut of motorists trying to escape parking and speeding fines because their letters never arrived.

Jess Keep, 30, who works in IT and lives in Yeovil, Somerset, says she has not received letter deliveries for more than two weeks, adding: “My partner had a hospital appointment [on Saturday] and he would have missed it if he hadn’t called the hospital to speak to them about something else.” She visited the Yeovil delivery office on Thursday and, after queuing for one hour, collected one hospital letter as well as three other letters.

“It’s stressful because, if you know you’re expecting a bill or hospital appointment, you don’t know if you will get it in time or miss it. I do feel for people who can’t pick their post up,” she said.

Hannah, 37, a school teacher from north Watford, says her family have only had only four letter deliveries in the past five weeks — on November 10 and 22 and December 5 and 15.

Most of the cards for her son’s birthday arrived on November 22, nine days too late. Her mother-in-law posted special Christmas cards to both of Hannah’s children, aged four and six, but only one has arrived.

She said: “My son is waiting for two referrals from the NHS and the appointment letters were supposed to come in December. My worry is we miss an appointment and we will be back to square one.”

Piles of post become a hazard

Royal Mail said services in Watford had been hit by vacancies and staff absences but the maximum delay would now be two days. It said deliveries in Yeovil had been affected by lifts being out of order and flooding but most routes were being “delivered to standard”.

Royal Mail’s sometimes cramped and ageing delivery offices are also struggling to handle the huge volume of parcel. Royal Mail says average parcel sizes have grown by around 30 per cent in recent years, and in any typical week parcels take up about 90 per cent of the sorting space in its delivery offices. Changing consumer habits mean parcel sizes have also doubled in the past six years.

In Southampton, the depot manager had started four weeks before and was trying to increase recruitment of permanent staff to alleviate the problem of leftover letters. He said: “If you let parcels build up around the frame it becomes a safety hazard when you have to step over.”

On the wall of the sorting office in Southampton, a large poster instructed staff that they must clear their frames of parcels and letters by the end of their shift. However, within a few feet of the frames there were shelves crammed with letters on several days in early December. Asked about the leftover letters, one manager blamed “a lot of sick and a lot of vacancies”.

Ofcom says it meets Royal Mail regularly to make sure it is taking steps to improve service levels “as a matter of urgency”.

In response to the investigation’s findings, Sir Vince Cable, who was the business secretary when Royal Mail was privatised in 2013, said: ‘It sounds like scandalously bad management and failure to observe the legal requirement to provide a universal service.Surely the regulator should intervene and be asked to explain why they have not done so.”

Jonathan Reynolds, the shadow secretary of state for business and trade, said: “This important investigation raises some very serious questions about the delivery of the universal service obligation.”

Dave Ward, general secretary of the Communication Workers Union (CWU), which says it represents the majority of postal workers, said: “It is clear from what postal workers are saying and what customers are seeing that on the ground parcels are being prioritised over letters across the UK.

“Morale amongst postal workers is at an all-time low. They are devastated to not be properly servicing their customers.”

Royal Mail has insisted that there is no company policy of prioritising parcels over letters.

It said: “We will always do our utmost to ensure both letters and parcels are delivered on time. The run-up to Christmas is our busiest time of year, with more than double the normal number of letters and parcels passing through our network.

“We have always been clear that at busy times such as Christmas it may be logistically necessary to clear parcels first to avoid network issues, keep the mail moving and ensure the safety of our colleagues, especially in small delivery offices. These measures have been shared with Ofcom who have not identified any suggestion that Royal Mail senior management have directed the prioritisation of parcels over letters outside of recognised contingency plans.

“We have taken steps to improve quality of service and deliver Christmas, including recruiting 16,000 seasonal workers, opening five temporary sorting centres and launching a quality of service incentive scheme for all operational staff. The vast majority of mail is delivered on time and our latest published quality-of-service figures show that three quarters of first-class letters arrive the following day, and 96 per cent are delivered within three days of posting.”
 
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