This is an edited version of a longer letter sent by Caroline Lucas, MP for Brighton Pavilion, to Martin Seidenberg, Chief Executive of International Distribution Services, the parent company of Royal Mail, in February 2024
As the MP for the Brighton Pavilion Constituency, I have ongoing and serious concerns that Royal Mail post delays are a significant problem in Brighton and Hove, which has a very real and measurable impact on both residents and businesses in the city.
I have raised my concerns with Royal Mail on multiple occasions, and I have received various replies over the last few years which have failed to reassure me that Royal Mail properly understands the scale of the problem in my constituency, or the impact it has on those reliant on postal deliveries.
Furthermore, the responses I have received do not leave me in any way confident that Royal Mail managers recognise the responsibilities the company has to meet the universal service obligation (USO) it agreed to at the point of privatisation. Any public service element within Royal Mail appears to have been wilfully neglected in recent years.
Royal Mail fails to meet its universal service obligation (USO)
In Brighton, Royal Mail has frequently missed its delivery targets, with first class stamped deliveries falling alarmingly to just 44.1% of the 93% target in quarter three in 2022/2023, and hovering just above the 60% mark in the most recent data available online from the 2022/2023 reporting period. As you will be aware, the First Class target Royal Mail needs to achieve under the USO is 93% of First Class mail to be delivered within one working day of collection. This is not happening in my constituency.
The figures in Brighton and Hove are significantly below target, and are in fact considerably below the average delivery times recorded nationally, with Ofcom noting that in 2022/23 Royal Mail achieved just 73.7% of its target. Yet by contrast, I was told in a reply from Royal Mail on the 19 July 2023 that: “on average 98.9% of parcels delivered by Brighton Delivery Office are now successfully getting to customers on the first or second delivery attempt.”
This simply serves to reinforce the view that Royal Mail is going where the money is, prioritising parcel deliveries over and above the public service requirements the company has, which the company willingly signed up to at the point of privatisation.
This is wrong.
My constituents are experiencing very real problems with post deliveries, including causing them to miss hospital appointments because letters do not turn up on time. The delays are also compounding personal grief and heartache in some instances.
For example, one mother received beautiful letters meant for her adult son but he never got to see them because they arrived after he had died. A bundle of post she received after her son’s death also contained the order of service for his funeral, which had taken place weeks before.
Postal votes delivery failures
I am also concerned by the significant increase in late postal votes in Brighton and Hove. At the local elections in May 2023, the number of postal votes received the day after the election in Brighton and Hove was 1,423, which makes up 4.6% of the postal votes cast.
To provide some context, data published by the Electoral Commission suggests in 2019 the number was just 19 (0.057% of postal votes cast), with further votes arriving late making a total of 145. For the General Election in December 2019, over the three constituencies in the city, data suggests that there were just 17 late postal votes received within 24 hours after the polls closed.
The dramatic rise in late postal votes in May 2023 is alarming and suggests a significant problem.
It is not about the outcome of the election itself, simply that voters need to have confidence in the voting system. With nearly 5% of postal votes being cast in the city not being counted in May 2023, Royal Mail’s failure to deliver postal votes on time has the potential to erode confidence in the postal voting process, and impact on people’s democratic right to vote and have a say in elections.
Staff conditions and Royal Mail’s neglect of the North Road site
I visited the Royal Mail’s North Road delivery office in November. I’ve previously been told by Royal Mail that one issue impacting on deliveries in the city is the constraints of the building. Yet during my visit I was quite horrified by the way in which Royal Mail has let the vast building fall into disrepair, something which has happened over a considerable period of time and that could have been prevented. It was plain to see that Royal Mail has failed to invest in the building for many years.
Water frequently comes through the ceiling in bad weather, and this can, and does, have implications for electrical safety due to water dripping through fittings. Furthermore, the vast basement, which used to be in constant use, has not been used for the past year because of significant flooding and also due to a lift being “condemned”.
The three floors above ground level remain unused. For a company complaining about nosediving profits, I cannot fathom why Royal Mail has allowed this valuable office space in the centre of Brighton to sit empty, which I believe has been the case for a decade or more.
It appears that Royal Mail’s interest is only in the land value the North Road site may bring at some point in the future when and if sold, rather than investing in the people working in the building by addressing the disrepair and providing a healthier, and more welcoming working environment.
I would like to add that, from my conversations with postal workers on the ground, it’s clear that they care enormously about the work they do. They also have many frustrations about issues which impact on their ability to do their job. The excellent work of posties on the ground is also echoed in the correspondence I receive from constituents, whose concerns are about the broader issues filtering down and exacerbating delivery delays in the city, which is a problem evidenced elsewhere in the country.
Postscript :
Caroline recently received a response from representatives at Royal Mail to the above letter, but she remains concerned about service standards and multiple errors, discrepancies in the company’s replies and ongoing issues constituents raise. She has also made a submission to Ofcom of the universal service obligation review they are undertaking : https://carolinelucas.com/caroline/parliament/letter/letter-to-ofcom-chief-executive-about-royal-mail
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