Wimbledon town hall leaders fume as residents hit by Royal Mail postal delays

By Tara O’Connor, local democracy reporter

Residents are missing out important medical and bank documents because they say there are delays in getting Royal Mail post delivered.

Some Merton residents have reportedly not received any mail for weeks at a time.

The leader of Merton Council, Councillor Mark Allison, said he has written to Royal Mail to address the issue “as a matter of urgency”.

Councillor Allison said: “Many residents have not been receiving any Royal Mail post for several weeks at a time, and it is now having a number of potentially serious impacts.

“The letters affected include important bank documents, medical letters and correspondence from key organisations such as Merton Council itself.”

Even MP for Wimbledon, Stephen Hammond, revealed he has not received any post for a week in a tweet on Monday (January 10).

He said he has written to the company on behalf of constituents who have complained about “the appalling local service”.

Other people have taken to social media to complain about the problem, with one person tweeting: “We have ongoing issues in Wimbledon with mail taking over a month to arrive.

“There are simply not enough postmen/women employed to deliver the service that we are paying for. It is simply not good enough.”

In response to the council leader another said: “Not just letters – I have a text message saying my LFTs [laternal flow tests] were supposed to be delivered on Saturday between 10.31am and 2.31pm, and tracking is still saying they’ve not got further than Wimbledon [delivery office].”

Cllr Allison added he was concerned families on low incomes would miss out on vital cash as the council was currently taking applications for household support grants.

He said: “We have so far received fewer applications than we would have anticipated, and I am increasingly concerned that some families will miss out because their application was received too late.”

While he acknowledged the service has been hit with staff having to isolate because of Covid-19 he claims that Royal Mail has not responded to a previous letter demanding answers.

A statement on the Royal Mail website reads: “Deliveries are operating as normal across most of the country today.

“We aim to deliver to all addresses we have mail for, six days a week.

“In a small number of local offices this may temporarily not be possible due to local issues such as Covid-related self isolation, high levels of sick absence, resourcing, or other local factors.

“In those cases we will rotate deliveries to minimise the delay to individual customers.

“We also provide targeted support to those offices to address their challenges and restore our service to the high standard our customers would normally receive.”

Royal Mail was contacted for further comment.