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Villagers in Clare are playing the postcode lottery
WHILE Haverhill people enjoy one of the most efficient postal services in the country, Clare and parts of north Essex suffer one of the worst, according to figures released last week.
Cambridge (CB) was one of the only nine postcodes in East Anglia to reach its target for next day delivery of first class mail.
Service by the Royal Mail in Colchester (CO) and Chelmsford (CM) was so bad an investigation has been launched with the industry regulator Postcomm.
Cambridge was tenth best in the country along with Doncaster, while Colchester was fourth worst and Chelmsford fifth worst.
The national target for first class mail is that at least 92.5 percent of it should reach its destination the next day, anywhere in the UK. None of the country’s 122 individual postcode should fall below 90 percent.
Cambridge achieved 93.9 while Chelmsford reached 89.3 per cent and Colchester only 94 percent.
Dr Charles Winstanley, chairman of Postwatch East of England, said: “The industry’s regulator Postcomm has already threatened enforcement on those postcodes not performing and Postwatch intends to monitor standards of service in our region”.
“We must remember these are minimum targets that they are expected to achieve. We would like to see them achieving much higher. We have initiated an investigation into service at Chelmsford and Colchester where performances appear to be particularly bad”.
Cambridge”s performance was nevertheless disappointing because, 89 per for the first three quarters of the year, it had been the national leader with 95.2 per cent of first class mail being delivered the following day. Top in the country was Sunderland action and the worst was southwest London.
Colchester’s performance was exactly the same as Kirkwall in the Orkneys, which was not included in minimum targets that they are the list because its remoteness made next day delivery too difficult.
Date : 12-06-2003
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