ROYAL Mail today revealed its service to Ipswich postcodes has got worse since the end of last year, despite a massive improvement agenda.The company failed to meet its targets of delivering mail on time in Ipswich during the three months to June, with only 89.

ROYAL Mail today revealed its service to Ipswich postcodes has got worse since the end of last year, despite a massive improvement agenda.

The company failed to meet its targets of delivering mail on time in Ipswich during the three months to June, with only 89.7 per cent of First Class letters delivered on time.

That fell short of the government's target of 92.5 per cent and was a step backward from the 90.6 per cent of First Class mail, which was being delivered on time at the end of last year.

The company insists that changes implemented as part of its three-year improvement programme had resulted in improvements in July, but the latest quality of service figures for IP postcodes show First Class deliveries still fell short of the target, with 90.9 per cent of mail delivered the next day.

Royal Mail said it recognised figures needed to improve further in East Anglia.

The company's director of operations for the east, Roger Baynes, said: "There is now real evidence the service is getting better. Clearly there were some problems earlier this year but the service is improving since then and we have more to do.

"During the spring we saw a huge amount of change in the organisation.

"The changes were not optional but are essential to improve efficiency and ensured Royal Mail can compete profitably with a high quality service against growing competition in the mail market."

He added: "We've implemented around 95 per cent of the operational changes in our modernisation programme for the letters business, involving changing the jobs of 140,000 postmen and women and restructuring the entire national transport operation. We have also improved the security of the mail."

Postwatch described the quality of service results for Ipswich as "worrying".

The watchdog's regional manager for the east of England, Linda McCord, said: "The service is not to the standard customers would expect."

She added that Ipswich was the best performance region for mail delivery last year and said it was disappointing the service had worsened rather than improved further.

"Ipswich achieved 90.6 per cent at the end of last year," she said.

"It was the only post code in the east of England which achieved the target.

"We're very disappointed because none of our postcodes have met the target for the first quarter."

Nationally Royal Mail failed to hit all 15 of its performance targets during the three months to June, with just 88.3 per cent of First Class letters delivered the next day.

However Second Class post is now hitting its target of 98.5 per cent of items being delivered on time after continued improvement since April.

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