Royal Mail beat its First Class and Second Class quality targets during the summer months, according to the company’s latest service report. Business bulk mail also achieved its targets along with standard parcels and European International Mail during the three-month period from early June to early September.
First Class beat its 93.0 percent target for next-working-day delivery with a 93.2 percent performance during the three-month period. Four of the 118 postcode areas achieved greater than 96.0 percent performance and 14 were above 95.0 percent. However 14 areas were below the minimum 91.5 percent First Class performance. Royal Mail is doing all it can to lift the unacceptable performance in these areas.
Overall Royal Mail hit or exceeded eight of its 12 service targets. It narrowly missed its targets by a few hundreds of one percentage point for the numbers of collection points and delivery routes completed each day, in part because of disruption in the wake of riots, which affected a number of areas in August. The Special Delivery service narrowly missed its 99.0 percent target with a 98.8 percent performance. A total of 104 out of 118 postcode areas hit their minimum service performance for First Class. The Hebrides, Orkney and Shetland are excluded because of their remoteness. The target for mail correctly delivered was exceeded.
Mark Higson, Royal Mail’s managing director for Operations and Modernisation, said: “These performance figures reflect the hard work and dedication of our employees as Royal Mail presses ahead with one of the biggest transformation programmes in UK industry. The maximum period of change is now underway.
“The jobs of more than 100,000 postmen and women are changing, we’re giving them better equipment to take the weight off their backs of higher packet and parcel volumes, and large amounts of new technology are being deployed. We remain determined, however, to complete our transformation while delivering the highest possible quality service to all our customers.”