MP Mike Amesbury slams Royal Mail for cutting opening hours

The company reduced opening times at half of its customer service points last month, including those in Runcorn and Northwich.

Depots such as Runcorn’s now only open between 8am and 10am and weekdays, and from 8am to 12pm on Saturdays, while Northwich also opens between 4pm and 6pm on Thursdays.

MP for Weaver Vale Mike Amesbury has written to the Department for Business to voice his concerns.

He said: “These changes represent a massive cut in the previous opening hours, potentially inconveniencing domestic and business customers who use the service for both sending post and packages and collecting missed parcels as well as online shopping returns.

“In addition, the timeslots now available are inconvenient for people who don’t work from home. It feels like a cynical attempt to undermine the service to eventually justify closing it altogether.

“This is about forcing everyone to make arrangements online through an app but not everyone is able to embrace the digital age, including some pensioners. Yet again we see the human touch disappearing because of corporate greed.”

MP Mike Amesbury has written to the Department for Business (Image: Mike Amesbury)

Mr Amesbury is also worried about the impact these cuts will have on postal workers.

“My suspicion is ‘new work practices’ started to come in during the pandemic as an excuse to run down the numbers of workers,” he said.
“You can see the effect on the reliability of the postal service in general.

“The price of stamps continues to go up but parcels are prioritised over letters and we see delays in the delivery of everyday mail due through no fault of hardworking postal staff.”

A spokesperson for Royal Mail has said that while they understand the concerns people have over the new opening hours, due to changes elsewhere in their operation, there is less need for Customer Service Points (CSPs).

They said: “We understand the importance that some customers attach to CSPs as one of a number of ways in which they can access our services.

"An increase in doorstep services such as Parcel Collect and Safeplace are helping us to enhance customer convenience and deliver more parcels first time.

"In May this year, we also introduced automatic redelivery of parcels the next working day across the UK for customers who are not at home when posties attempt to deliver the first time.

"Over 99% of parcels are now successfully delivered to customers on the first or second delivery attempt.

"This is reducing the need for customers to collect parcels from CSPs."

The spokesperson added: "To keep pace with the changing behaviour of our customers, we are amending the opening hours of CSPs.

"We have a range of options free-of-charge for customers who want to arrange for an item to be redelivered.

"Details of how to arrange this can be found on our website at: https://www.royalmail.com/receiving-mail/redelivery.”