Response from Royal Mail

Regular readers will recall that Audlem Online, unhappy with the response to an earlier letter, wrote to Moya Greene, chief executive of Royal Mail, on 21st February.

We asked for an answer to three points, as follows:

1. Could you let Audlem Online know why the service was so appalling for almost three months and why your spokesmen misled the local media when, after it was announced that the CW area was the 120th worst in England, Scotland and Wales out of 121 areas, he claimed the teething problems at the Warrington Sorting Office had been 'sorted'; then that it was the weather; then people mis-addressing mail; then that the incidents of delayed post were 'isolated'.

2. Could you confirm, deny, or correct the points made above about the marquee in Warrington. We are told that security was inadequate and that items in your care simply 'disappeared'.

3. Could you explain why a chief executive, who above all others in the UK should encourage the prompt answering of letters, can take 39 days to answer a letter, and then do so without responding to the questions raised.

Response todayA response to that letter arrived this morning. As expected, the response was not quite as frank as we had hoped for.

Question 1 was dealt with by: "My previous response explained that we had experienced difficulties with mail deliveries in the Crewe area, partly due to the changes made to local working practices. The situation was compounded by the worst winter weather in the UK in living memory." Then some points from their previous letter were repeated.

There was no mention of the Royal Mail's decision to close the Crewe sorting office, the fact that local Audlem posties got through all the snow, or any response about the misleading statements on TV and radio.

On question 2, the response was: "With regard to the use of marquees, I am sure that any internal decisions made by businesses are confidential and as such are not in the public domain. However, I can assure you all our decisions are underpinned by security and mail integrity considerations as these are extremely important to us. We always do everything possible to minimise loss, theft, damage and interference to the mail in our care."

It's a carefully crafted response and unfortunate given that the Royal Mail is a public service and there have been many instances of mail going missing. Perhaps a Freedom of Information formal request will produce a more forthcoming response. Missing cheques, bank statements etc is an extremely serious issue with such a vital service as the Royal Mail.

The response to the third question asking why our first letter took the chief executive thirty nine days to answer was: "May I apologise for the delay in responding to your original correspondence as your letter was not unfortunately passed onto the relevant team on receipt. I apologise for this lapse and can assure you that action has been taken to prevent further errors of this nature."

We have to admit, there has been an improvement in response time. The previous thirty nine days was reduced to sixteen days for our second letter to be answered!

The Royal Mail letter concluded by saying the case could be reviewed, if we ask, by the Postal Review Panel – postalreview@royalmail.com">postalreview@royalmail.com or by post to Freepost Postal Review Panel quoting the reference number 1 – 1731516758.

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