Customers "not an absolute priority" for Royal Mail

The UK postal service has been slammed as "chronically poor" by a committee of MPs. Some areas, including London, are particularly badly served by Royal Mail, which sees over fifteen million items a year lost, stolen or damanged.

The MPs also criticised the compensation process offered by RM, which they said was inadequate and overly complicated. The chairman of the committee, Edward Leigh MP, said:

"You would expect that a new regime for the quality of postal services would aim to improve collection and delivery times and reduce the number of pieces of mail lost by Royal Mail. If so, you would be mistaken. Neither of these aspects of performance is targeted under the current regime introduced in April of this year. Given that people are now receiving their mail later in the day and that over 15 million letters and parcels are being lost, stolen or damaged in a year, it is pretty clear that the interests of ordinary users of the post are not an absolute priority."

Royal Mail is also due to announce the closure of thousands of post offices on Thursday.