Dear Sir or Madam,

I have recently become concerned about the quantity of mail that is
lost en route to the intended destination. I have personally not
received a number of items that are sent to me.

Please can you provide me with the following information for recent
years:

1) a breakdown, by delivery office, of the number of items
of mail that were reported missing, and
2) an indication of the total number of items of mail delivered by
each delivery office.

Yours faithfully,

Tom Betts

Dear Mr Betts

Thank you for your request for information received on 13/01/09, which we
are considering under the Freedom of Information Act. Under the Act you
should expect a reply from us to be sent by 10/02/09, 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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Mr Betts,

From our preliminary assessment of your Freedom of Information request, it
is clear that we will not be able to answer your request without knowing
exactly which time frame you are interested in.

You have requested the number of mail items delivered and the number of
items reported missing broken down by delivery office. The only time frame
specified in your request was 'for recent years'. In order to identify and
retrieve information relevant to your request, can you please specify the
exact period for which you wish to request this information. I understand
that our system contains information for the last three years only.

Once you have clarified this, I will be able to continue to process your
request. If we do not receive clarification within three months your
request will be considered to have lapsed. (Under section 1(3) of the
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), a public authority need not comply with
a request unless any further information reasonably required to locate the
information is supplied).

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 Ms Teasdale,

Thank you for your message. If you can provide the information for
the last 3 years as you have specified that would be much
appreciated.

Yours sincerely,

Tom Betts

Dear Mr Betts

Re: Freedom of Information Request

I am writing in response to your email received 13 January 2009, in which
you requested the following information for the last three years:

1) A breakdown, by delivery office, of the number of items of mail that
were reported missing.
2) An indication of the total number of items of mail delivered by each
delivery office.

Items of mail reported missing are recorded via loss complaints which are
available to view on our website. Here you will be able to find the number
and category of complaints received nationally and broken down by postcode
area. 2007/08 information is available by following the link below and I
have attached the previously published complaints information for 2006/07.
http://www.royalmailgroup.com/portal/rmg...
.

We do hold numbers of loss complaints allocated to specific to delivery
offices. However, we believe that this information is exempt from
disclosure under section 43 of the Freedom of Information Act. These
figures are likely to be reported, or presented by competitors, out of
context. This would unfairly and unnecessarily undermine confidence in
local mail services. At a time when switching from mail to other media is
already in evidence and the postal market is open to full competition, we
believe that this would unfairly prejudice Royal Mail's commercial
interests.

It is important to note that complaints recorded against delivery offices
are done so according to the addressee of the item. This does not
necessarily mean that, in the case of loss complaints, the item went
missing in the delivery office responsible for deliveries in the
addressee’s postcode area, this could have occurred elsewhere in the
process.

In relation to the volume of mail delivered by each Royal Mail delivery
office, we do hold relevant information but believe that this information
is also exempt from disclosure under section 43 of the Freedom of
Information Act. This information would be likely to be used by Royal
Mail’s competitors to inform their own commercial strategies and activity.
This would place a Royal Mail at a significant commercial disadvantage in a
highly competitive market where other postal operators are not required to
release equivalent information themselves.

The application of section 43 of FOIA is subject to the ‘public interest
test’. Although there is public interest in the quality of service Royal
Mail provides, we believe this interest is satisfied through our reporting
to the regulator and the publication of our Quality of Service information.
Further, Royal Mail Group is a publicly owned company and there is a real
and direct public interest in its commercial performance and ability to
operate on a level playing field with competitors. Therefore we consider
that the balance of public interest is in favour of maintaining the
exemption.

I am sorry we have not been able to meet your requirements on this occasion
but hope the information provided is of use. If you have any queries or
further requests in the meantime 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 Case Officer
Company Secretary's Office

(See attached file: 06-07 Annex A.pdf)(See attached file: 06-07 Annex
B.pdf)

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Dear Ms. Teasdale,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of
Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Royal Mail Group's
handling of my FOI request 'Lost mail volume'.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is
available on the Internet at this address:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/lo...

In your response to my request you have claimed exemption under
Section 43 of the Freedom of Information Act. You have stated that
you will not provide the information about loss complaints
allocated to specific delivery offices because it is likely to be
reported out of context by competitors. You have provided little
evidence that this will occur, however in order to exercise
exemption under Section 43 it is required, where possible, that you
provide empirical evidence that this is the case. Any
mis-representation by competitors would surely be subject to the
same rules and regulations, such as libel, that apply in any other
circumstance. On the contrary - making this information available
to the public will provide transparency to the public and allow the
public to better understand the performance of Royal Mail services.

In providing the requested information, Royal Mail should include
as much additional information as they see is required in order to
assist end-users of the data in using it to make a judgement. For
example, I understand that the delivery office may not be
responsible for the loss of a delivery item, and Royal Mail can
provide caveats such as this with the requested information.

In order to apply exemption under Section 43 you are required to
apply the 'public interest test'. In doing so, you have assumed
that the information provided in your regular reporting to the
public and regulators is sufficient. Having examined the Quality of
Service reports, I can inform you that the information contained
within this report is insufficient for the public to make a
judgement about the performance of local services, and this is the
reason for my original request. The breakdown of loss information
is insufficient to understand how the loss rate varies across
delivery offices. This is because the information is provided only
at postal area level. Some postal areas - especially London postal
areas - are extremely large, and therefore this type of reporting
does not provide sufficiently fine-grain detail.

I look forward to your response having considered the above points
during internal review.

Yours faithfully,

Tom Betts

Dear Mr Betts,

Re: Internal Review under the Freedom of Information Act

Thank you for your email received today 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 Betts

I am writing in response to your request for an internal review, under the
terms of the Freedom of Information Act, of your request for information
from Royal Mail Group regarding mail reported missing and the volume of
mail delivered at individual delivery offices. Our internal review panel
have completed a review of your request and I am writing to advise you of
their decision.

In your original request for information dated 13 January 2009, you asked
for the following information:

“…for recent years”

“1) A breakdown, by delivery office, of the number of items of mail that
were reported missing, and;”

“2) An indication of the total number of items of mail delivered by each
delivery office.”

In your email dated 15 January 2009, you clarified that you wanted this
information to cover the last three years as held by Royal Mail. In our
response dated 10 February 2009 Marie Teasdale confirmed that, although
Royal Mail holds information within the scope of your request, this was
believed to be exempt from disclosure under section 43 of the Freedom of
Information Act 2000. In your email dated 14 February 2009, you requested
an internal review of this decision.

The review panel firstly considered whether the exemption under section 43
was correctly applied in relation to your first request. You asked for a
breakdown, by delivery office, of the number of items of mail that were
reported missing in the past three years. As we explained in our original
response, when items are reported missing to Royal Mail it is recorded as a
loss complaint. Royal Mail publishes the number of loss complaints
received each year, both nationally and at postcode level and this
information was provided to you in our response. Royal Mail also holds the
number of loss complaints broken down according to the delivery unit which
would have delivered the lost item and it was this information which was
withheld under section 43 of FOIA.

In our original response we explained that these figures are likely to be
utilised by competitors and that this would unfairly and unnecessarily
undermine confidence in the local mail services. In your request for an
internal review you suggested that we had not provided evidence that any
prejudice would occur if this information were disclosed. Guidance on the
application of section 43 states that a department's, or other body's,
commercial interests might, for example, be prejudiced where a disclosure
would be likely to weaken its position in a competitive environment by
revealing market-sensitive information or information of potential
usefulness to its competitors.

The same guidance issued by the Information Commissioner’s Office does also
state that any assertion that commercial interests might be prejudiced must
be supported by reasoned argument, and where practicable by empirical
evidence. Although it is not possible to give empirical evidence of the
actual prejudice that would be caused by disclosing this information
(because this information has never been available to Royal Mail’s
competitors), the review panel concluded that it was reasonable to believe
that this information would be useful to, and would therefore be likely to
be utilised by, competitors if it is made public.

It is important to recognise the commercial nature of the market that Royal
Mail operates in. Since January 2006, the UK mail market has been fully
liberalised. Competitors are able to offer customers full end-to-end
services for collection, sorting and delivery of their mail. These
companies compete directly with Royal Mail to provide postal services. The
panel agreed that it is likely that companies in direct competition with
Royal Mail could make use of this information, for example, in negative
marketing or negotiations with business customers, and that this would
clearly be prejudicial to the commercial interests of Royal Mail. After
considering all of these factors, the panel agreed that section 43 (2) of
the Freedom of Information Act was applicable in this case.

Section 43 is subject to the Public Interest Test and the appeal panel also
considered whether, despite the application of the exemption, the public
interest test favours disclosing the information. In relation to
competitors making use of this information, the panel considered the public
interest in a transparent and accountable postal service and the extent to
which this is already provided by the regulation of postal services and the
provision of performance information under the terms of Royal Mail Group’s
licence from Postcomm.

In your request for an internal review you argued that disclosing this
information would “provide transparency to the public and allow the public
to better understand the performance of Royal Mail services.” You suggest
that the performance reports published by Royal Mail are not sufficient for
the public to “make a judgement about the performance of local services”.
You argue that the breakdown of loss complaints published by Royal Mail
does not show how loss varies across delivery offices. However, a key
point here, as we stated in our original reply, is that loss complaints are
recorded according to the addressee of the item. This does not mean that
the items, about which complaints were made, went missing in the delivery
office responsible for deliveries in that addressee’s postcode area, this
could have occurred anywhere else in the delivery network. This
information does not therefore; allow the level of loss actually occurring
at individual delivery offices to be compared.

The panel concluded that the extent to which the figures in question would
genuinely serve the interest of the public does not outweigh the public
interest in protecting Royal Mail’s commercial interests and that
therefore, the public interest test favours maintaining the exemption under
section 43 (2) of the Act.
The review panel also considered whether the exemption under section 43 of
FOIA had been correctly applied in relation to your second request. You
requested the following information:

“…an indication of the total number of items of mail delivered by each
delivery office.”

Royal Mail holds figures recording the mail traffic delivered by each
delivery office in 2007, 2008 and 2009 to date. The review panel agreed
that this information would also be likely to be used by Royal Mail’s
competitors. An example of how competitors would be likely to utilise this
information is of a competitor looking to set up alternative delivery
systems. The competitor would target those Royal Mail units with large
traffic volumes to give them the density to justify their investment in the
required infrastructure. Royal Mail’s own operational information would,
in that case be benefiting the competitor and damaging Royal Mail’s own
business. The panel agreed therefore, that section 43 was also applicable
in this case.

The panel again considered whether, despite the application of the
exemption, the public interest test favours disclosing the information.
However, the panel concluded that there was less public interest in the
case of the second request. We do not believe that the interest in
disclosing details of the volume of mail passing through individual offices
outweighs the public interest in protecting Royal Mail’s commercial
interests from prejudice as described above. The public is served by the
provision of daily postal deliveries; the number of items passing through
individual offices does not affect the end product received by the public
in terms of daily deliveries and collections. We do believe therefore that
this information would inform any wider debate or choice in relation to
mail services and that therefore, the public interest test also favours
maintaining the exemption in relation to your second request.

I hope that this explains our reasons for withholding this information.
Please contact me directly if you would like any clarification or if there
is anything further I can do to help. In the event that you are not
satisfied with this response, you do also have a right to appeal to the
Information Commissioner who can be contacted at:

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

Yours sincerely

Colin Young
Freedom of Information Manager
Company Secretary's Office

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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