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• Royal Mail is to axe another four dedicated rail
Page 10
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services from next month i April) because the deliveries can be done more efficiently by road.
This means that the number of rail services operated by Royal Mail will have dropped from 58 to 51 since the beginning of this year:
A spokeswoman for parent group Consignia says the services—which run between Motherwell and Birmingham; Warrington and Plymouth; Newcastle and Plymouth; and London and Motherwell—are performing poorly. Three other services were axed in January.
We face greater pressure almost day by day to deliver on time so we are transferring to road to meet our targets. The work will be done by the Royal Mail fleet," she adds. Only some 20% of mail is now carried by rail.
But a spokesman for rail-freight company EWS says: "Performance and reliability targets as laid down by Consignia in the contract we have with them have been met."
• The chairman of logistics business services group Hays has warned against delaying the breakup of Royal Mail's postal monopoly (CM 7-13 Feb).
Bob Lawson says so far Hays has only been given licences to operate within the monopoly for 12 months on a trial basis: 'Customers are not prepared to make major changes to the handling of their mail when licences are of an interim nature."
He was speaking after Hays reported a 16% slump in six-monthly profits in logistics because of difficult market conditions, particularly in the UK.