East Dulwich: Residents waiting several weeks for post to arrive

People living in a part of south London are receiving items of post often more than six weeks late, with serious consequences for some residents.

One ended up in court after a parking fine never arrived, while another person's mortgage deal was jeopardised when paperwork failed to arrive.

The post union, the CWU, says job cuts are being proposed in the area where working conditions are already awful.

The Royal Mail says the delays are due to sickness and strike action.

The problem, primarily affecting East Dulwich, has been ongoing since the closure of the Dulwich local sorting office, say residents and the local MP.

A Royal Mail employee and CWU member who did not want to be named said: "Postmen are being told to leave letters behind and just concentrate on packets. It's a car crash. The atmosphere is toxic.

"The workload is too much, people are going off sick because it's so stressful and there's so much pressure."

Medical letters, football tickets, bank cards and a passport are among the items residents say have been weeks late. Items are also going missing, with a death certificate never arriving in one instance.

"Of course, most of us do use email for lots of our correspondence, but often it's only the really important things which still come in the mail," said Sarah Donnelly, who waited three months for her passport to arrive.

Ms Donnelly lives on Landells Road, which appears to be the worst-hit area with dozens of complaints on that street alone, but there are reported problems over a large part of central Southwark.

Her neighbour Gavin Silvey said the situation had become awful with him not receiving bowel cancer screening results and two tickets for a Premier League football match, which he missed.

Heber Road resident Rebecca Dunkin received her mortgage agreement a month late, on 22 November, jeopardising her mortgage deal.

"It's a nightmare - you name it, I'm waiting for it," she said. "I was still receiving Christmas cards in March 2022."

Daniel Sleat on Landells Road said: "We periodically go weeks without mail. We complain, sometimes with the support of our MP and councillors, Royal Mail divert more people on to our route for a short time to clear the backlog, and then it goes back to being awful - there is no plan in place to fix it properly."

MP for Dulwich and West Norwood Helen Hayes said the situation had been worsening over the past six weeks, with her getting complaints about mail every day.

"I find myself in a pattern of response [from the Royal Mail] that does not reflect what my constituents are telling me. There is no evidence from when I get large numbers of complaints that it correlates to when the strikes occur."

Ms Hayes says that since the mail for the area has had to come out of a delivery office two miles away, in Peckham, there has been no end of problems, with long rounds for postmen and women and understaffing at the root of the problem.

"With any additional pressure like Covid, reliability gets knocked off course. There is no resilience at all in this arrangement, and there is a lack of transparency from the Royal Mail about what is actually going on," she added.

"It's more than an inconvenience, it's really serious."

The postal worker the BBC is not naming said conditions for postal workers were "diabolical" and that he had seen a Royal Mail document proposing three job cuts to the already "skeletal" staff in the area in the new year.

He said: "Every year there are problems, and it's never been sorted out since the relocation. Postmen have to travel further and we can't get round in time and the service in East Dulwich is appalling. But the problem is more widespread than that.

"Since the pandemic, some bad habits have crept in. Ordinarily, if we don't deliver one day, we should do the next under the universal service obligation - but management aren't interested in fulfilling that basic service now. It's about saving cash, and that's part of the dispute."

The dispute between Royal Mail employees and its management will see staff on strike for six more days until 24 December. The CWU wants to see improved conditions and reach a better pay agreement.

A Royal Mail spokesperson said: "Every item of mail is important to Royal Mail. We are very sorry for the delays reported by some of our customers in parts of SE22.

"We are in the process of addressing some resourcing issues locally, and expect that customers will soon be experiencing a service of the high standard that they are entitled to expect from Royal Mail.

"Separately, we apologise for any inconvenience the CWU's industrial action is causing. We have well-developed contingency plans to ensure our customers are looked after, and minimise any delays to keep people, businesses and the country connected."

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