The myth that Britain has the best postal service in the world – perpetuated by millions of holidaymakers when returning before their postcards – has been busted: Royal Mail is ranked sixth and falling fast, according to a think tank.
The Royal Mail lags behind some nationalised and privatised rivals, including countries with much greater distances to cover to deliver post every day, but most national services are improving faster than Britain’s.
The UK ranks just 16th out of 19 for improvements to its postal system, according to think-tank the Oxford Strategic Consulting (OSC).And from 2007-2010, Royal Mail was the only one of the 19 services to have “reduced its postal office network significantly”, the study found.
It analysed and ranked the postal services operated nationwide in the 19 most developed countries of the world to find the US top, followed by Japan. Australia, despite the massive distances and sparse population, is rated third, with Korea fourth and Germany fifth. The Royal Mail is next, one place ahead of France.
OSC compared the number of people served by each post office, letters and parcels delivered per postal worker, and the overall efficiency rating for the service. Royal Mail’s employees delivered 15% fewer parcels in 2009 than in 2007, but managed 4% more letters.
The UK’s rating for performance and public trust was lower than its overall standing, coming in at 11th, after neither rising nor falling from 2007 to 2009.
OSC director William Scott-Jackson said: “If you could live anywhere in the world and were sending a package to someone this Christmas, you would want to be in the US, Japan or Australia.”
Postal services across the world are losing business to digital communications as emails replace letters, but they are gaining from parcel deliveries through online shopping. The secret, said the OSC study, was to make postal services reliable and fast, particularly when it was needed most such as at this time of year.
Prof Scott-Jackson added: “People tend to think the Internet has made the postman redundant, but postal services provide the backbone for e-commerce deliveries.”
The US Postal Service came top for combining a high level of efficiency while maintaining the trust of its public. It delivers 268,894 letters per employee per year on average. Britain’s postmen and women, in contrast, deliver less than half that – 121,418 letters per person per year.
