Fareham PO14 failure to deliver mail daily

Dear Mr Harrington

Thank you for your request for information received on 27/10/08, which we
are considering under the Freedom of Information Act. Under the Act you
should expect a reply from us to be sent by 24/11/08, which is twenty
working days from receipt of your request.

If for any reason we are unable to provide you with a full response within
that time, we will contact you explaining the reasons for this and giving a
revised date by which we will reply.

If in the mean time you have any questions or would like to contact us
about your request, please contact us by telephone 01252 806513 or
alternatively email or write to us at the address below. Please be assured
that we are giving this our attention and will get back to you shortly.

Yours sincerely

Marie Teasdale
[Royal Mail Group request email]
Freedom of Information Unit
PO Box 341, ALDERSHOT, GU11 1WW

Royal Mail is a trading name of Royal Mail Group Ltd. Registered in England
and Wales.
Registered number 4138203. Registered office at 148 Old Street, LONDON EC1V
9HQ

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Dear Mr Harrington,

Thank you for your recent request for information in relation to delivery
failures in the PO14 postcode area.

We do hold information relevant to your request. However, we have been
advised that disclosing this information may prejudice operations and
therefore we believe Section 43 is engaged. In this instance, we need
further time to fully evaluate the balance of public interest in this
information.

We do, of course, aim to make all decisions within 20 working days. In this
case, however, we have not yet reached a decision on where the balance of
the public interest lies. We plan to respond in full to you by the 01
December 2008. If it appears that it will take longer than this to reach a
conclusion, we will keep you informed.

If you are unhappy with the service you have received in relation to your
request and wish to make a complaint or request a review of our decision,
you should write to the Head of Information Compliance, Royal Mail House,
Company Secretary's Office, 5th Floor, 148 Old Street, LONDON, EC1V 9HQ.
An internal panel will then review the decision, and you will be advised of
the outcome.

If you decide to appeal and are still not satisfied with our response you
also have a right of appeal to the Information Commissioner at:
Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow,
Cheshire, SK9 5AF

Please contact me if you have any further queries or information needs in
the meantime.

Yours sincerely

Marie Teasdale
Freedom of Information Unit
Company Secretary's Office

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Dear Mr Harrington

Re: Freedom of Information Request

I am writing further to my email dated 24 November in which I explained
that more time was needed to evaluate the balance of public interest in
relation to your question, ‘how many weekdays have Royal Mail failed to
deliver mail in the PO14 postcode in the last year?’ Particularly in the
week up to the 25th October.

It might be helpful if I first give a little background. Each area covered
by a Royal Mail delivery office is divided into “walks” and a postman or
postwoman is assigned to each walk on a daily basis. Delivery or ‘walk
failures’ are recorded either as part walk or full walk failures so refer
to either single items not being delivered (meaning a delivery walk was not
completed), or they refer to full walks not being delivered. It is worth
stressing that we make every effort to make deliveries on every walk, every
working day and I am pleased to say that we achieve this goal almost all
the time. But there may be occasions – when, for example, unexpectedly
higher levels of sick absence occur – when it is not possible to complete
every walk. Walk failures are reported by Delivery Office and not postcode
sector. We cannot provide the specific information you requested but we
can provide the number of walk failures for Fareham Delivery Office which
covers the PO14, PO15, PO16 & PO17 postcode sectors.

Fareham Delivery Office handles approximately 120,000 items per day,
delivered across 111 walks. Between 25th October 2007 and 25th October
2008 there were five dates when failures were recorded for Fareham Delivery
Office. Four out of the five dates related to part-walk failures and on the
remaining date, there were full walk failures. These full walk failures
were the result of a situation which required the Delivery Office to be
evacuated following the identification of a potentially hazardous substance
in a container of Special Delivery items. Emergency services were involved
as it appeared there could have been risk to our people and to customers to
whom we deliver the mail although, in this instance, it was and confirmed
later that day that the substance was of no risk. There were no failures
in the week up to the 25th October 2007.

I hope this information meets your requirements but if you have any queries
or further information needs in the future then please do contact me. If
you are dissatisfied with this response for any reason you do have a right
to request an internal review, in which case please write to the Head of
Information Compliance, Royal Mail House, Company Secretary's Office, 5th
Floor, 148 Old Street, LONDON, EC1V 9HQ. An internal panel will then
review the decision, and you will be advised of the outcome.

If, having requested an internal review by Royal Mail, you are still not
satisfied with our response you also have a right of appeal to the
Information Commissioner at:

Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Telephone: 01625 545 700
www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk

Yours sincerely

Marie Teasdale
Freedom of Information Unit
Company Secretary's Office

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Dear Mr Harrington,

Re: Internal Review under the Freedom of Information Act

Thank you for your email received 01/12/08 requesting an internal review of
Royal Mail Group’s reply to your request for information under the Freedom
of Information Act 2000. This is receiving our attention and I will write
to you again once the internal review has been concluded.

In accordance with guidelines from the Information Commissioner’s Office,
Royal Mail will answer all appeals and requests for internal review of FOI
requests as soon as it reasonably can. This will usually be within 20
working days and in any case no later than 40 days from receipt of the
appeal.

In the mean time if you have any questions or would like to add any further
information for consideration then please do not hesitate to contact me.

Yours sincerely,

Martin Rush
Head of Information Compliance
[email address]

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Dear Mr Harrington

I am writing further to your email dated 01 December 2008. Firstly, I
would like to apologise that you appear to have experienced problems with
your mail delivery. I hope that these issues are now resolved, but if you
are still unhappy with the service then please let me know and I will be
happy to refer this to our Customer Services team to investigate further.

Your e-mail also requested an internal review, under the terms of the
Freedom of Information Act, of the way in which Royal Mail responded to
your request for information dated 25 October 2008. Our panel has now
completed this review under the terms of the Act, and this letter is to
advise you of the outcome.

In your original email of 25 October 2008, you asked “how many weekdays
have the Royal Mail failed to deliver mail in the PO14 postcode in the last
year. Particularly in the last week.”

In our reply we explained that each area covered by a Royal Mail delivery
office is divided into delivery routes called “walks”. We make every
effort to make deliveries on every walk, every working day. For addresses
in urban areas Royal Mail endeavours to make a delivery every working day
by 2pm. For addresses in rural areas Royal Mail endeavours to make a
delivery every working day by 3pm (subject to exceptions for remote areas
with limited transport infrastructure such as the Scottish Highlands &
Islands).

Any failure to complete a “walk” on a working day is recorded as either a
part walk or a full walk failure. Our reply to your request gave details
of all such failures relevant to the Fareham Delivery Office, which covers
PO14, PO15, PO16 & PO17 postcode sectors, and the number of days on which
these occurred. In reviewing this, the Panel were satisfied that the
information provided to you was an accurate reflection of the information
Royal Mail Group has on record, and therefore considered that the reply did
meet the requirements of Section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act.

In your appeal, you questioned whether the information provided was
accurate and referred to an incident where a letter was incorrectly
delivered to your address, but another letter was correctly delivered just
after 11:00am. You will see from the above information that this would not
be recorded as a failure to deliver mail, because a delivery was made to
you (at 11:00am). However, if we have misunderstood your request in any
way then please do come back to us, and we will be happy to see whether we
can help further.

I hope that this provides some assurance and suitably explains the
information provided in response to your request. However, if for any
reason you are not happy with the outcome of this review, you also have a
right of appeal to the Information Commissioner at:

Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Waterlane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Yours sincerely

Martin Rush

Head of Information Compliance

Company Secretary's Office
5th Floor, 148 Old Street, London, EC1V 9HQ

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Dear Mr Harrington,
Thank you for your e-mail. Just to confirm that I have passed this to our
Customer Services Team, who will be in touch with you shortly.
Kind regards

Martin Rush

Head of Information Compliance

Company Secretary's Office
5th Floor, 148 Old Street, London, EC1V 9HQ

"Mr M. J. Harrington"
<request-3804-ef644c8f@whatdoth To: [email address]
eyknow.com> cc:
Subject: Re: Freedom of Information request - Fareham PO14 failure to deliver mail
26/01/2009 09:59 daily

Dear Mr Rush,

No, I am not6 satisfied with your reply.

I note that you state " For addresses in urban areas Royal Mail
endeavours to make a delivery every working day by 2pm" Do you
really believe that is good enough?.

When I stated that "I referred to an incident where a letter was
incorrectly delivered to your address, but another letter was
correctly delivered just after 11:00am". This referred to the fact
that we had no mail delivery the previous working day. The date in
question refers to separate deliveries on the day in question,
suggesting that no mail was delivered t6he day before.

In this delivery area, it is a common problem not to receive
deliveries regularly.

I wish to take up your offer to pass this onto your Customer
Services team.

Yours sincerely,

Mr M. J. Harrington

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Dear Mr Harrington

As requested in your last email, we have passed details of your concerns on
to our Customer Services team. In order for them to look into the problems
you have experienced and contact you directly to resolve any issues, please
could you provide your address and/or telephone number. You can email us
directly at [Royal Mail Group request email] in order to prevent your personal information
being published on the WhatDoTheyKnow website.

Yours sincerely

Colin Young
Freedom of Information Manager
[Royal Mail Group request email]

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