David Burton-Sampson

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Chris Bloore) for securing the debate and my hon. Friends the Members for Lichfield (Dave Robertson) and for Corby and East Northamptonshire (Lee Barron), and many other hon. Members across the House, for their work on this matter. My constituents in Southend West and Leigh, like those of so many other hon. Members, have been rightfully disappointed in the service provided by Royal Mail. I concur with much of what I have heard. Southend was the original pilot area for the optimised delivery model, so we have been experiencing these issues locally for well over a year. It was deeply concerning that the clear indications that the ODM was not working in Southend did not prevent it from being rolled out nationwide. It is increasingly frustrating for my constituents, who feel that they are not getting the service they are paying for. For many people, the poor service has been not just inconvenient but disastrous, and we have heard many stories tonight about how it has been replicated across the country. NHS letters are not the only urgent post not being delivered. One constituent lost a job opportunity when a Disclosure and Barring Service certificate failed to arrive in time and another man, who was terminally ill, experienced unacceptable delays in receiving the paperwork he had requested to arrange his own funeral. I heard many such stories at a public meeting I held back in April, which gave residents the chance to put their concerns directly to Royal Mail’s regional management. Improvement was promised at the meeting, but guess what? It never came. In July, I held a consultation, which received 122 responses in just a couple of days. I am sorry to say that the feedback was overwhelmingly negative. Of those 122, 102 said that they were “dissatisfied” or “very dissatisfied” with the postal service. Only one person considered the current standard of service acceptable. Throughout this time, I have regularly met the CWU—the union that represents postal workers—and heard from it that postal workers in my constituency have been overworked, under immense pressure and unhappy with the standard of service they have been able to provide. They are equally unhappy at the massive variations between the old and new contracts, but I do not have time to talk about that. I was heartened to hear—a bit of positivity—that after a visit in August, having requested my fourth visit to the depot, Southend sorting office, in partnership with CWU reps, was ready to trial a new system that would rebalance the round loads and help reinforce the local link between the postie and their area in an amendment to DM26 that is about to be rolled out. Posties are much more efficient when they know the layout of their rounds, so it is clearly not rocket science to have them on a dedicated round. The trial took place in Leigh-on-Sea in my constituency. A month later, I was glad to visit the sorting office again and see the racks empty—but this time the CWU assured me that things had worked well and that, in that particular round, they were back in control. As of 19 October, the new system has been rolled out across our whole sorting office area. I will be keeping a watching brief, but it is showing real positive signs. I hope that those at Royal Mail will look at the success of the local pilot and roll it out across the rest of the country. If it is working, why would they not?