Watchdogs 'concerned' over Royal Mail target failures

Watchdogs have voiced their concern and worry over Royal Mail's quarterly performance which saw the business fail to hit any of its 15 licence targets.

The results showed that Royal Mail managed to deliver just 88.3% of 1st class letters on time against a target of 92.5% between April and June. May saw the service hit its nadir of 87.2% of 1st class letters delivered. Only six of the UK’s 121 postcode areas exceeded their targets.

According to the watchdog Postwatch, target failures meant that over 1.7 million 1st class letters were not delivered every day in April, May and June.

Royal Mail said that their quarterly performance was marred by a "temporary dip in performance" between April and June.

The dip in performance in the spring was put down to the company bedding in a "massive modernisation programme in the letters business".

Royal Mail’s Chief Executive, Adam Crozier, said: “Clearly there were some problems in the spring but the service has improved, month-on-month, since May. We are now approaching our target level for First Class mail.”

However, Postwatch said that this was the "poorest quarterly performance for more than three years", adding that there should be no price increases without verifiable service improvements.

Peter Carr, Chairman of Postwatch, said that for the last three years, customers have been paying higher prices for a declining service – which is a "bad consumer equation".

“We are consistently promised by Royal Mail that performance will improve. These results show service levels in the first quarter of this year did not improve on last year’s very poor performance in 11 of the 15 targets," he said.

“Reports of improvements in recent months are welcome but the Management has an uphill task to reach all of the service targets by the end of the year."

The mail watchdog Postcomm has said that it was "concerned, but not surprised" at Royal Mail’s performance.

However, the watchdog acknowledged that Royal Mail’s top management had taken a grip on the situation, and its performance has begun to improve since mid-May.

"We know that the way Royal Mail implemented elements of its renewal plan, which affected the company’s performance in the last quarter, persisted into the beginning of this year. The service to customers was not acceptable and Royal Mail has begun paying out compensation for last year," it said.

Looking forward to next quarter, Royal Mail's preliminary figures for August show that 1st class, next-day delivery performance is currently hitting around 92% - a "major improvement of five percentage points above May, the period when there was the greatest level of operational change", Royal Mail said.

(gmcg)