Letters crisis (From Gazette Series)

Letters crisis

SIR - It is interesting that so soon after your article regarding the erratic postal delivery times there should be a programme concerning Royal Mail London sorting offices on Channel Four on April 29 and that an important letter I sent from the post office in Cam should be lost (the sixth item of mail in three years). I have also been informed that a parcel posted in Cam for a grandchild's birthday was also 'lost in the post' recently.

The programme transmitted by Channel Four could not have been more horrifying. It showed machinery that was old and passed economic repair, management that seemed to have little knowledge of the job and certainly no control of events, a work force that seemed to be both demoralised and rebellious and the employment of agency staff without any form of training or security or other checks defying all normal criteria to maintain the standard of delivery and the security of our more sensitive post that we should expect.

This last aspect, according to the undercover reporter, an open invitation to UK and foreign criminals to come on in and take what they wanted; no one seemed willing to take any action against them. Even the work of the internal security forces was hampered to favour criminals.

I have been told that banks, forced to use the Royal Mail through the sheer volume of their post bag, are now having to resort to specially designed packaging to disguise the shape of credit cards because of the sheer volume of cards taken by the criminal element now at large in the postal service. As a prison visitor to Leyhill Prison I have visited a staff postman caught stealing registered mail and I know that he was not a one-off.

There was a time when the Royal Mail seemed safer than the Bank of England but not any more. In spite of the Royal Mail's advertising campaign to woo customers the service is, if the Channel Four programme is to be only half-believed, on the point of collapse. Certainly I will be using another more secure carrier for important documents and valuable items in future to ensure they reach their destination. A pity!

Peter Russell-Yarde, Orchard Leaze, Cam