Royal Mail has been fined more than £5million for failing to hit its targets in the 2022-23 financial year.
Under the Postal Services Act 2011, which allowed for the service to be privatised, the company is required to ensure a six-day a week, one price goes anywhere, service for the delivery and collection of letters (and five days a week for parcels) throughout the United Kingdom.
It is further required to deliver 93% of First Class mail within one working day and 98.5% of Second Class mail within three working days, and complete 99.9% of delivery routes for each day on which a delivery is required.
However, regulator Ofcom found that for the 2022-23 financial year, the privatised company only delivered 73.7% of First Class mail on time and 90.7% of Second Class mail on time, and completed 89.35% of delivery routes each day.
Even accounting for things such as industrial action and extreme weather conditions its First and Second Class performance was still only 82% and 95.5% respectively.
Ofcom found that Royal Mail was in breach of its obligations and levied a £5.6m fine against the company, a figure which was reduced by 30% because Royal Mail admitted to culpability and agreed to settle.
Read More: Royal Mail accused of 'absolute breach' of service obligation on Scottish islands
The money must be paid to the Treasury within two months.
Ian Strawhorne, Ofcom Director of Enforcement said: "Royal Mail’s role in our lives carries huge responsibility and we know from our research that customers value reliability and consistency.
“Clearly, the pandemic had a significant impact on Royal Mail’s operations in previous years. But we warned the company it could no longer use that as an excuse, and it just hasn’t got things back on track since.
“The company’s let consumers down, and today’s fine should act as a wake-up call – it must take its responsibilities more seriously. We’ll continue to hold Royal Mail to account to make sure it improves service levels.”
Ofcom's report also found Royal Mail "appears to have insufficient control, visibility and oversight over local decision-making at certain delivery offices where high absence and vacancies may have led to customer operations managers – who are responsible for individual delivery offices – making “on the day” decisions about what to deliver".
Last year The Herald reported that residents on Islay were left without deliveries for over a week due to a shortage of staff.
One former postie on the island said the job had become impossible due to Royal Mail staff being expected to deliver Amazon packages and other such mail as well as their regular duties.
Read More: Islay residents face Royal Mail nightmare amid postie shortage
Councillor for Kintyre & the Islands, Alastair Redman, accused the company of being in breach of its universal service obligation.
Speaking to The Herald at the time he said: "They’re in complete breach of universal service, it’s not a universal service.
"In the villages it’s bad, I live in Port Charlotte, but my father stays in a croft on the backroads between Port Charlotte and Portnahaven – he’s waiting even longer.
“He hasn’t had post in a long time, the only time he gets post is when one of my brothers picks it up for him at the sorting office.
“That’s just simply not good enough. You cannot expect members of the public, who have jobs and their own commitments to do Royal Mail’s job for them because they’re not willing or able to hire staff or pay staff a correct wage.”
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