24 March 2006
Regulation provided by the watchdog Postcomm has helped to improve the delivery of Royal Mail services, auditors have reported, but some targets go unmet, despite the threat of competition to the monopoly firm.
A study of the effectiveness of Postcomm by the National Audit Office, published on March 22, finds that Royal Mail's performance against crucial service quality targets continued to improve in the first half of 2005/06, when the organisation was above standards for all but four of its benchmarks.
That represents a steady improvement on 2004/05, when the firm met four targets, and on 2003/04 when it did not meet any.
But auditors found that performance across parts of London had shown little improvement and 'not yet achieved the licence target levels over a full reporting year'.
Postcomm recently levied penalties of £13.8m on Royal Mail, partly for missed targets.
NAO chief Sir John Bourn urged Postcomm to 'minimise the costs [of regulation] and maximise the benefits in the short-term', as the market opens up to competition.
PFmar2006
