A YORK postman claims that a York delivery office is in chaos, with piles of postbags going undelivered daily.

The worker said he decided to speak out because staff were demoralised and customers across the city infuriated.

He told the Evening Press that the problems were due to changes to working practices introduced earlier this year by Royal Mail to cut costs and improve efficiency.

He claimed:

Road delays are putting deliveries back by hours

Special deliveries are regularly up to TEN hours late

Overworked staff are forced to leave bags of mail untouched

Managers have had to take out deliveries when agency staff failed to show.

A number of readers have contacted the Evening Press in recent weeks to complain about their deliveries, saying letters have been arriving late and also going to the wrong address.

One York resident, Bob Lawrence, said today he posted eight letters first-class on Monday in Leeman Road, 45 minutes before the last collection. It was important that the letters, all sent to addresses in the York area, were delivered the next day. But none arrived before Wednesday, and he had found they were all franked 5.30pm Tuesday.

The postman said the company was still employing scores of expensive, inexperienced agency workers, who received little training and did not have the specialist knowledge required of some routes.

"Everyone understands you need to save money, but the agency staff are getting more than normal postmen," he said.

"You should walk around that office on a lunchtime and see the mail that has not been delivered. Staff are just demoralised, fed up with false promises. It is not a nice environment to work in," he said.

A Royal Mail spokeswoman has denied there was a backlog of mail and said the company was achieving the targets of its operating licence.

"Using agency staff is accepted practice during busy periods, and though we accept that in some cases training has not been up to scratch, we are addressing this.

"I can assure you that even though we are meeting the terms of our postal delivery licence, we will, of course, continue to work with the union and staff to look for ways to improve service."

Paul Clays, regional secretary of the Communication Workers' Union, said: "There are problems and we are asking the business to come to the union and have realistic dialogue so that the quality of service can go back to what it was."

Updated: 09:40 Saturday, May 22, 2004