Royal Mail deliveries hit by staff shortages
Temporary and permanent staff to remedy situation
Staff shortages at Stirling’s Royal Mail delivery office are disrupting deliveries in the area, the company admitted this week.
Insiders say there have been days over the past four or five weeks when some areas have received no mail at all.
And deliveries to some parts of Stirling have had to be curtailed because of a lack of posties.
Yesterday (Tuesday) a spokesman for Royal Mail apologised and said extra staff were being drafted in to tackle the problems at the Stirling area delivery office in Whitehouse Road, Springkerse.
One postie told the Observer: “It has been going on every day for well over a month. A lot of staff have left recently and we have not had enough people to cover rotating days off .
“Delivery men and women work five days out of six every week, and when they have a day off there should be cover but at the moment there are occasions when there are not enough floating staff to do that.
“It means there are some areas where people will get the mail a day late, delivered early in the morning by agency staff.”
The insider said in those circumstances, householders receive their normal postal delivery for that day just hours later.
“People are getting no deliveries one day and sometimes two next day. We have had people asking if we are going back to the old ‘two deliveries a day’ system but that’s not the case; it’s down to staffing problems.”
The postie said there had been particular problems in Bridge of Allan and Bannockburn, and issues in Torbrex, Cowie, Plean, Cambusbarron and Blairlogie.
“Management are saying they don’t have enough staff but they should have,” added the postie, who asked not to be named for fear of disciplinary action.
“They have drafted in agency staff and are using management from other areas but there are still problems.”
The postie claimed they had staffing problems as far back as November last year when the Observer ran a story quoting a Quality of Service report which suggested that in the six months from April, 2016, Royal Mail had exceeded its first class mail targets in the Stirling area – with more than 94 per cent of mail delivered the next working day.
Royal Mail spokesperson, Morag Turnbull, said: “We would like to apologise to any customers in the Stirling area who have been experiencing later deliveries than normal recently.
“This has been due to staff shortages in the office. We have quickly put contingency plans in place which include drafting in extra temporary resource and employing new permanent staff this week.
“We are committed to delivering a high quality of service to all our customers in the Stirling area.”