Royal Mail has apologised to customers after it failed to meet delivery targets for the third successive year.
The troubled organisation blamed ‘wildcat’ strikes and internal restructuring for the poor service, which has seen many businesses suffer delayed or lost post.
Industry watchdog Postcomm is now set to hit Royal Mail with a multi-million pound fine, following warnings last year that targets were not being met.
Royal Mail was badly damaged by an unofficial strike by workers last October, which lasted two weeks and cost the company millions.
Small firms across London and the South East failed to receive deliveries, as postboxes were taped up to help cut the mounting backlog which took weeks to clear.
Royal Mail’s image has suffered badly in the business community over recent years, with recent postal price rises doing little to appease disgruntled entrepreneurs.
Adam Crozier, chief executive of Royal Mail, told the BBC that changes, such as a single daily delivery, will soon begin to become accepted.
“The first thing to say is a huge apology for not providing the service that we should.
“For the total year we will probably have failed our annual target by around 2.5 per cent which is not nearly good enough.
“Single delivery is taking a few weeks to bed in, but it does seem to take a little more time than we expected.
“We need to make this change because if we don’t we are simply not going to be able to compete with other people coming into the marketplace in future,” he said.
