Second Class letter took 11 days to arrive (From The Bolton News)

Second Class letter took 11 days to arrive

10:05am Saturday 17th March 2012 in Your Town

A BOLTON MP has slammed the Royal Mail after it took 11 days for a second class letter to reach her constituency office from London.

Yasmin Qureshi raised con- cerns about the second class postal service after taking part in a Westminster experiment.

The Bolton South East MP was one of 38 MPs to take part in a postal survey, set up by Shadow Minister for Postal Affairs Ian Murray, designed to test the efficiency of the Sec- ond Class Service.

Letters were posted from a central London postbox to MP’s offices across the coun- try, and the time taken to deliv- er each item was recorded.

Although the Royal Mail’s published aim is to deliver Second Class items within three working days — not one of the items arrived within the three-day target.

On average it took more than six working days for the items to reach their destina- tions.

Ms Qureshi said: “On this occasion it took 11 days for an item posted in London to arrive in the constituency. And that is significantly longer than the three-day target published by the Royal Mail.

“Usually when an item arrives in the post there’s no way to tell when it was posted or how long it took to deliver. So it’s impossible to tell whether it regularly takes this long or whether this is a unique case. Nevertheless I am sufficiently concerned by the findings to raise them with the Royal Mail.

“The Second Class postal service is relied upon by many people in Bolton and when they trust it with their letters, their invoices or their greetings cards they deserve to have an accurate idea of the time it will take to deliver.”

Royal Mail bosses insisted the majority of second class post reached its destination within its targets.

David Simpson, Royal Mail’s director of news, said: “The most recent, published inde- pendent measurement, based on around 245,000 mail items posted to nearly 6,000 address- es nationwide, shows beyond doubt Second Class mail is hit- ting its 98.5 per cent target, and the target was also beaten dur- ing the last financial year.”