Royal Mail Delivery Office Closures
Debate between Phil Wilson and Helen Hayes(7 years, 2 months ago)
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Helen Hayes
My right hon. Friend is right to make that point. Extended delivery hours at a location very far from where residents live is no substitute for having a facility directly in their community. That is exactly the issue we are debating.
There is also a significant problem for customers who pay to use the PO box service, for the confidentiality and convenience that provides, and for whom Royal Mail appears not to have accounted at all in its plans. Delivery offices are also part of the fabric of our communities. There is a strong relationship between Royal Mail staff and the customers they serve, which makes the institutions more than simply transactional in the role they play.
The closures Royal Mail is proposing in my constituency would severely restrict the accessibility of services for my constituents. Under the proposals, residents in the SE27 postcode area, who currently use the West Norwood delivery office, would be required to travel not to the next nearest delivery office, which is too small to accommodate the work from West Norwood, but to a delivery office three miles away, which requires them to take two different buses on congested roads: a journey that can easily take an hour each way, not accounting for the queuing time that will inevitably result from more mail being delivered at that delivery office.
Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. I want to make an observation that I hope she will agree with. There is a general decline in our parcel service, which is exacerbated by the closures of facilities. I think 38% of parcels arrive late, 28% of parcels are left in insecure areas, and 28% of people get a note through the door saying that nobody was in when there was. What I find most difficult to accept is that all these closures have taken place without public consultation.
Helen Hayes
It is precisely my argument that Royal Mail needs to compete on quality, not simply seek to reduce its costs to survive in the competitive environment it finds itself in.
The impact is similar in East Dulwich, where residents will have to travel to Peckham to collect their post, to a delivery office that is not easy to find and which has no dedicated parking. In East Dulwich, it is accepted by staff that the current delivery office building is not fit for purpose, but that is only because of the immense growth in parcel deliveries at that location, which means that the workload has outgrown the site. That is only an argument for finding new premises in the SE22 postcode area, not an argument for forcing residents to travel longer distances to collect their mail.