Royal Mail blames poor weather and sickness for delayed deliveries
Royal Mail has warned of possible service delays in more than 100 UK postcodes, citing recent storms and rising staff illnesses as reasons for the outage.
The announcement comes after a period of increasing complaints about postal delays, and concerns were also expressed that parcels were being prioritized over letters.
The postal carrier on Monday identified 38 delivery offices covering nearly 100 zip codes across the country as those most likely to slow down service.
A spokesperson for the company explained that “adverse weather conditions, including storms Goretti, Ingrid and Chandra in January, as well as higher than normal sickness absences, have caused short-term disruptions on certain routes.”
Royal Mail attempted to reassure customers, stating: “We would like to reassure our customers that the vast majority of mail is delivered as planned and understand how frustrating it is when mail does not arrive as expected.”
The company added that it would deploy extra support to affected routes to “restore deliveries as quickly as possible”.
Meanwhile, a report by the BBC has revealed that some letters are being held up in delivery offices for weeks, leading to people missing out on urgent communications such as appointment notifications and bank statements.
Citing unnamed postal workers, the report said parcels were prioritized over letters in some warehouses, even if they were first class, while staff shortages were affecting the service more broadly.
It is understood Royal Mail would prefer to clear packages first if they quickly pile up and block walkways at delivery offices.
The company said it is delivering more packages as online shopping increases and the number of addressed letters sent over the network is decreasing.
Royal Mail serves nearly two million postcodes and is required to deliver mail six days a week, aiming to deliver both letters and parcels on time.
Last year the Ofcom Regulator allowed Royal Mail to cancel second-class letter deliveries on Saturdays and change the service to two weekdays.
It rolled out the changes on a pilot basis at 35 distribution offices but did not roll it out to all 1,200 sites across the country after failing to reach agreement with the staff union.
We are in the midst of a month-long dispute resolution process with the Communications Workers Union to reach an agreement on how the workforce will be affected by the revision.
