Accrington Woman Describes Six-Week Mail Delivery Halt as “Farcical”

An Accrington woman has described the absence of mail deliveries to her residence for six weeks as “farcical,” prompting her to retrieve her post personally from a sorting office. Jean Larner, a resident of Accrington in Lancashire, stated she had been anticipating an urgent hospital appointment letter for over two weeks. Other residents in the vicinity have also reported comparable problems, with one individual informing the BBC that his son’s hospital correspondence arrived three days subsequent to the scheduled appointment date. Royal Mail indicated that an improvement in the situation was expected “by the end of this week”. The company had recently incurred a £10.5m fine from the regulator Ofcom due to its failure to achieve delivery targets for the second consecutive year. Ms. Larner expressed that she was “extremely concerned” regarding the hospital letter. She stated, “I’ve been to the sorting office twice myself in the last week and had a small handful of post handed to me, but it’s getting quite worrying.” She added, “I’ve been checking online and other people haven’t had post since 1 November.” Ms. Larner also mentioned she was awaiting theatre tickets ordered in November and that a V5 certificate for a recently purchased car had taken four weeks to arrive. She noted that she only received that particular letter “because my husband went to the sorting office.” “All they’re saying is ‘we’re prioritising parcels’,” she quoted. Another resident, Andy Gilroy, reported having contacted Sarah Smith, the Labour MP for Hyndburn, concerning the matter. He described her as “very helpful” but noted that her reply had also been affected by the postal delays. He recounted, “Even her letter replying to my complaint took 19 days to arrive to my house.” He further stated that a hospital appointment letter for his son “took 21 days to arrive.” The MP informed Mr. Gilroy that she was attempting to schedule a visit to the Accrington Delivery Office and would “continue to raise concerns with colleagues in Parliament.” International Distribution Services, the parent company of Royal Mail, affirmed that it had implemented “substantial” reforms aimed at fostering improvements and was undertaking “the necessary changes to deliver for our customers.” A spokesperson for Royal Mail attributed the impact on deliveries in Accrington to a “higher than usual level of sickness absence” at the local delivery office. The spokesperson stated, “We have a plan in place to manage any delays with deliveries to every address at least every other day.” He concluded, “We anticipate the situation will improve by the end of this week.”