ROYAL MAIL has been fined £11.7 million for “serious breaches” of its licence after a spate of organised crime, large-scale thefts and a poor delivery record in London.
The action by the regulator Postcomm, which was revealed this week in The Times, is the biggest fine imposed on the postal group. Postcomm said that Royal Mail had fallen short on recruitment and training of agency staff and that systems designed to prevent loss, theft or damage were not working effectively.
Royal Mail has been at the centre of a large number of high-profile thefts. This week Lisa Harvey, a postwoman in Plymouth, was found guilty of stealing more than 110,000 items of mail. In December Dido Mayue-Belezika, a mail worker in North London, was jailed for 6½ years after masterminding a £20 million scam involving stolen chequebooks. Dispatches, the Channel 4 programme, used an undercover operation to disclose how new recruits were exposed to crime and mail dumping.
Nigel Stapleton, chairman of Postcomm, said: “Customers are entitled to expect that when they post mail it will reach its destination. But during 2004-05 about 14.6 million letters, packets and parcels were lost, stolen, damaged or interfered with.”
But the regulator emphasised that the problems were largely “management failings and do not reflect on the dedication and commitment of postmen and postwomen”.
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Previously Postcomm has fined Royal Mail £7.5 million for poor delivery standards, although the company has since improved its record nationally.
But yesterday’s fine included a £271,000 penalty for late deliveries in three areas of London. The regulator said that Royal Mail had failed to use “reasonable endeavours” to deliver the post on time. Yesterday’s fine is the culmination of a two-year investigation into Royal Mail’s practices by Postcomm.
The regulator exphasised that it was vital that Royal Mail had robust procedures in place across its organisation because the group, which employs 180,000 people, is highly decentralised. Royal Mail said that the problems that it was being punished for happened up to two years ago when it “was going through massive operational change”. It said that the amount of lost mail had halved in the past three years and that the amount stolen rather than lost or substantially delayed last year amounted to 0.006 per cent of an annual mailbag of 22 billion items.
Millie Banerjee, chairwoman of the consumers’ group Postwatch, said: “The postal service must be improved. Large fines are a good way to make sure Royal Mail’s senior management turn their attention to delivering on their rhetoric that ‘every single letter is important’. Customers used to post with confidence and through this action Royal Mail will have the incentive to ensure they can do so again.”
LOST IN TRANSIT
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Annual postbag 22 billion items
Lost, stolen or substantially delayed 14.6 million
Stolen 1.32 million
Daily postbag 84 million items
Postboxes in the country 116,000
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Household addresses 27 million
Average household spend on post £25-30
Compensation for delayed or lost 1st class post One book of 12 stamps per item