Royal Mail trumpets 50% fall in lost letters
The Royal Mail has announced that 280,000 letters a week are lost or delayed and claimed that it was a sign of major improvement for the company.
The figure represents a 50% fall in the number of letters lost or delayed each week and Royal Mail’s chief executive, Adam Crozier welcomed the improvement but accepted there was still ‘a lot to do’.
However, the postal services watchdog, Postcomm claimed that the number of letters being lost or delayed was much higher than Royal Mail had stated . Postcomm claimed that many errors were not recorded by Royal Mail.
Royal Mail announced that the number of letters lost or delayed had fallen from 500,000 a week last year to 280,000. The improvement means that 0.07% of the 21 billion letters Royal Mail delivers each year will be lost or delayed.
Mr Crozier commented, “This is a major step in the right direction and our people should take the credit for the improvement. Every single letter is important, so there’s a lot more to do but these results demonstrate Royal Mail’s commitment to improving our service to customers.”
Postcomm was also disappointed by an increase in the number of parcels stolen from people’s doorsteps. Royal Mail revealed that 1.5 million parcels were stolen this year, an increase of 600,000.
Royal Mail called on people to check the addresses on the letters they send as more than 8 million letters a day are sent without a postcode or have an incorrect postcode. Mr Crozier announced that the company delivered about 15 million letters a week that were incorrectly addressed.
