"No noticeable improvements here!", says Greg Hands.
Having suffered from one of the worst delivery services in the country, there was good news for local residents this week. New figures from the Royal Mail show a marked improvement in the percentage of first class mail being delivered on time to the local area.
The figures which are for the three months to June 30th 2004 were all the more remarkable given the general deterioration in the overall performance of the Royal Mail. These results show that Royal Mail failed to achieve minimum performance levels for
all 15 licence targets.
But Conservative spokesman, Cllr Greg Hands, says Hammersmith & Fulham still has a third class post.
Greg constantly hears from local residents how bad the postal service is all around Hammersmith & Fulham and wants Royal Mail to start taking the problem seriously, instead of ‘spinning’ national statistics.
Commenting, Greg said:
“With just one Post Office left in the W14 area, and Brackenbury Road (W6) and Fulham Palace Road (SW6) under threat from closure, the Post Office, Royal Mail and their Department of Trade and Industry masters are letting us down badly.
“Local people are constantly telling me how late their post arrives, if at all. Indeed, the post rarely arrives at the W6 based Conservative offices before 3pm.”
“It is time for Royal Mail and the Government to scrap their urban post office closure programme – and start putting local needs first.
“It is all very well to hail improvements in first class mail delivery in Kirkcaldy, Milton Keynes and Halifax– but that means nothing to the residents of Brook Green, Sands End and Parsons Green.
“They can use all the spin in the world about improvements nationally – but it just won’t wash in Hammersmith & Fulham.”
According to the Royal Mail, the SW region of London, which had effectively been the worst in the country according to the last set of figures, saw a 5.1% improvement to 87.2% of first class letters being delivered on time. The W post code area saw a 2.5% improvement to 87.1%
A spokesperson for the Royal Mail said that there has been further improvement in July; in the SW area it rose 3.8% to 91% and in the W area the rate rose 3.4% to 90.5%. The most recently published quarterly figures reflect a time at which major changes to working practises were being introduced.
Both areas are still below the national average but they have moved out of the table of the bottom 20 worst performing areas in the country, in which they had been a fixture since the figures have been collected.
Only 6 of the UK’s 121 postcode areas were above
the minimum average target of 92.5 per cent of 1st class letters delivered the next
day. Overall Royal Mail managed to deliver only 88.3 per cent of 1st class letters on
time. This is the poorest quarterly performance for more than 3 years. It means that
over 1.7 million 1st class letters were not delivered each day in April, May and June.
Lib. Dem. Councillor Gary Malcolm said: “Residents in Acton and Chiswick have really suffered over the past year with missed and late deliveries. It is also a scandal that the Royal Mail Chief Executive, Adam Crozier, has collected bonuses on top of his already large £500,000 salary.”
Peter Carr, Chairman of Postwatch commenting on the continuing poor service said,“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. For the last 3 years, customers have been paying higher prices for a declining
service. This is a bad consumer equation."
He rejected the Royal Mail's call for a price increase saying that service levels should improve before on is granted.
September 5, 2004