Royal Mail has announced annual profits of £220 million, but failed to meet any of its delivery targets.
Despite reversing several years of steep losses and recovering from last year's negative return of almost £200 million, the number of late deliveries increased.
Royal Mail is supposed to deliver 92.5 per cent of first class letters on the day after they are posted and 97.8 per cent of second class mail on time. The service, which holds a monopoly on letter deliveries, failed on both counts.
It also failed to reach nine other targets set by industry regulator Postcomm, which has said it will investigate the continued slips in service. Royal Mail must already make compensation payments of around £80 million but could now face further penalties.
The figures are sure to enrage small business groups, who earlier this month voiced their concern over Royal Mail’s failure to deliver a reported 14.4 million lost letters every year.
Many business owners feel Royal Mail has sacrificed the quality of its service in order to cut costs; a claim borne out by today’s figures and the fact that 27,000 workers have left since 2002. A further 5,000 jobs are reported to be scrapped by September.
Dave Ward, of the Communication Workers Union, which organised last year’s Royal Mail strike, said earlier this month that the company was trying to get a postal service “on the cheap”.
He also said, “Royal Mail must end the excessive use of agency staff, improve sorting and delivery training, employ a proper number of full-time workers on a pensionable basis on a decent salary, as befits a public service.”
In defence of today’s news, Alan Leighton, chairman of Royal Mail, announced he is to defer his annual bonus of £144,000 until the targets are met. He also pledged to ensure “the problems are fixed as quickly as possible,” in an interview with the BBC.
