Market Drayton's post 'piling up after round changes'

A backlog of undelivered post is piling up in Market Drayton following a shake-up of rounds by Royal Mail, a postal worked claimed today.

The worker, who asked not to be named, said delivery staff had been bombarded with questions from fed-up residents about post arriving late ever since new delivery rounds were introduced in the town. Royal Mail was not immediately available to make a comment over the claims.

The worker said currently about one in 10 items of post in the town is arriving later than it should following the shake-up about two weeks ago.

It comes after latest figures from Royal Mail showed while deliveries throughout most of the West Midlands were largely on time, only 91.1 per cent of first class mail in the TF postcode, which covers Market Drayton, arrived the next day between April and June.

The national target for first-class, next-day deliveries is 93 per cent.

Recent changes mean the same number of staff are working much larger rounds in Market Drayton.

But the postal worker said bosses had not given staff enough extra time to deliver all the mail, causing about 10 per cent of post to be returned to the sorting office where it stays for an extra day.

The worker said: "I have a certain amount of post to get through in a certain time but with the new rounds there is about 50 per cent more mail to deliver but we only get a few extra hours a week to do it.

"The managers want us to do overtime to clear the backlog, but staff don't always want to do the extra hours.

"It means paying customers aren't always getting their post when they should.

"We simply can't get it all out in time.

"I would say that about 10 per cent of mail isn't being delivered on time because of it."

The source added deliveries of first and second class mail plus larger items were being affected.

And they said the sight of postal workers on bikes could be a thing of the past in Market Drayton because staff are now using trollies which can carry much more mail.

By Tom Johannsen