The Mail Competition Forum (MCF), the organisation representing several of the UK’s leading mail and parcel operators, has commented following the Westminster Hall debate on Royal Mail’s service levels during and since the Covid-19 pandemic.
Many MCF members rely on Royal Mail for downstream access (DSA or Access) as Royal Mail is the only provider with national capability for final delivery of mail. In the year to April 2021, access mail accounted for 64% of all addressed letters delivered by Royal Mail, totalling more than 5 billion items.
Despite investing extensively to mitigate the effects of the pandemic on service levels themselves, MCF members say they have received prolonged poor service from Royal Mail, with mail consistently being delivered late, and still no assurances of a return to contractually agreed service levels. Despite this, Royal Mail have again greatly increased postal prices.
During last week’s Westminster debate, there was widespread support of Royal Mail staff and the Communication Workers Union, but criticism of Royal Mail management and the poor quality of service provided to customers. Ofcom’s role was also criticised with Helen Hayes MP stating, “My engagement with Ofcom has been, frankly, extremely disappointing. There appeared to be very little interest in the severe problems affecting my constituents, and no meaningful action that Ofcom, as the regulator, was willing or able to take in response.”
In a letter to Helen Hayes MP ahead of the debate, MCF Secretary Ian Paterson outlined Royal Mail’s woeful service and said Royal Mail was using the contractual term ‘disruptive event’ to negate responsibility for its prolonged poor-quality service.
With no clear timeline from Royal Mail on when pre-pandemic service levels are likely to resume or when the pandemic ‘disruptive event’ will come to an end, the Mail Competition Forum has appealed to both Ofcom and Royal Mail to bring an end to this stand-off.
A spokesperson for the MCF commented: “A significant proportion of the addressed mail MCF members carry is for critical services such as banking, utilities, councils and NHS Trusts. It needs to be delivered on time.
“At the start of the pandemic we understood the disruption, but while the DSA industry has adapted to bring its service levels back to business as usual, Royal Mail is still using the pandemic as an excuse more than two years on. We have worked hard to keep our end of the bargain, processing our client’s important advertising and transactional mail on time, but we are being let down at the final delivery stage. We’re seeing important mail arriving days later than it should, and all at a time when Royal Mail has raised its prices – it’s staggering really.
“We are asking Royal Mail to do three things: to get the access service back to the agreed level now, to end the no longer justifiable ‘disruptive event’ status, and to compensate Access customers for failing for so long to achieve the agreed service level. Ofcom needs to call Royal Mail to account and get us out of this stalemate.”
It remains to be seen how long it will take Royal Mail to start giving customers the quality of service they are paying for.
