Covid-19 Pandemic: Royal Mail Services

Tom Randall Excerpts

Tuesday 19th April 2022 Westminster Hall

[Tom Randall (Gedling) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ali. I congratulate the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) on securing this important debate. I would like to associate myself with the appreciative comments she made about postal workers.

My experience of postal deliveries came with my first opportunity to visit sorting offices in my constituency last Christmas, after covid restrictions were relaxed. I visited the sorting offices in Carlton and Arnold in Gedling. I was struck by the very close working conditions under which postal workers operate when sorting the post, working cheek by jowl. Although there was a good working atmosphere in both sorting offices, I congratulate them on their tenacity for working in such difficult conditions throughout the pandemic; it must have been a very difficult time.

The service in Arnold has remained very good, but there were serious concerns about delivery of post in Carlton. Medical appointment letters arrived after the appointment date, and birthday cards arrived late. A useful indicator of whether an individual or the system is at fault is the arrival of cards; when several birthday cards arrive after a birthday, that is a useful indicator that the system itself is at fault.

Some of my constituents received 10 or 14 days-worth of post at the same time, in one go after a long gap. That was initially ascribed to staff shortages and so forth as a result of covid, but on further investigation that seemed not necessarily to be the prime mover. Particularly at Carlton, new walk routes had been introduced and implemented because that sorting office was serving a lot more points than previously. Once the new system was implemented, it stuttered on day one, and a lot of work was required to resolve significant teething problems and iron out that problem, to get back to an acceptable level of service.

I had good meetings with Royal Mail on the matter. I also praise the members of the Communication Workers Union I met to discuss it. I hope that, as a Conservative MP, I do not damage their street cred too much by singling out Ian Pointer and Steve Blower for particular praise, as they gave me a thorough and considered briefing on the subject. As I stand here today, it looks as though the problems in Carlton have simmered somewhat. I am gaining significantly fewer emails in my inbox on the subject, so it appears to be resolved.

I want to use this opportunity to thank Royal Mail and its staff, who have worked so hard to resolve the issues in Carlton, and for stepping up to meet that challenge in difficult circumstances.