Safety concerns a prime reason behind phasing out of Royal Mail bikes

Nice article by Matt Seaton, and a Facebook Group has just started.

what does Mr. A. Crozier care anyway, he's long gone now (along with his £2 million bonus). off to ruin ITV so i hear..

I wonder if Adam Crozier realises that the pedestrian death rate per km is 50% higher than the cyclist death rate in the UK? Or that obesity from lack of exercise is about to overtake smoking as the leading cause of preventable death in the UK. So good move Adam. A very creative way of dealing with the Royal Mail's £10Bn pension black hole

I wondered why it was that I'd started seeing our postie parking his car at the top of the road…

I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed.

The recent series on Radio 4 by an anonymous postal-worker blogger was a real eye opener but depressing on a much deeper level than even the posties losing their bikes. As neilwheel and londoncalling suggests, there are some shady vested interests at work here but it all goes back to successive governments treating the infrastructure that makes society work (post, railways.....) as "assets" to be made "more efficient" by selling them to shareholders. It's no surprise that it opens an opportunity for the management-gobbledegook-speaking likes of Mr Crozier to carve a nice fat wedge for themselves. Time was the senior management of the Post Office were themselves posties who had shown intelligence and ambition to get ahead in an organisation they were proud of (in the sense that it was their life) and knew what it meant to ride a bike.

neilwheel - if posties are using their own cars for business use but are not insured for business use (and are merely covered for travelling to and from the daily place of work), then they're driving uninsured. Any accidents that occur during the course of the working day will not be covered. Insurance companies do investigate accidents because they'd rather not pay out if possible, with the result that any postie will carry the can in the event of an accident. Any manager who has signed paperwork allowing a postie to use his/her vehicle for business use and is aware the vehicle is not insured for this purpose could also face charges.

My motorbike is insured for business use. I don't take advantage of this often but when I do, I know that the small amount extra I pay ensures I'm covered. Perhaps posties need to be aware of the risk to their drivers' licences.

Royal Mail are forcing delivery staff to use their own transport, i.e. private cars, to carry out deliveries of mail.
Royal Mail staff are driving uninsured, and carrying uninsured mail in their own vehicles simply because it is the only way they are able to carry unrealistic loads over ever-increasing distances as delivery rounds are enlarged as part of Royal Mail's cost-cutting.

It has been happening for years; Royal Mail are taking advantage of the situation, by 'granting permission' (to use their own vehicles)to staff who would be unable to complete their delivery on foot, by bicycle or by being 'accelerated', i.e. driven in a Royal Mail van to the start of their round and being dropped off with half a dozen pouches of mail to look after.

Bikes are not being used, because you can't carry up to seven pouches of mail (16kg each!) on a delivery bike. Between 5 and 7 pouches of mail is the average load of an inner-city delivery on most days of the week.

Royal Mail won't pay for drop boxes to be erected along delivery routes, won't pay Post Offices and corner shops to act as 'safe drops' for mail bags (so that delivery staff can pick up fresh pouches as one is emptied) and got rid of all their bike mechanics and maintenance and safety managers years ago (go on, ask me how I know...).
The bikes that are still in delivery offices are in an unsafe condition and have not had any maintenance carried out for over 2 years. No new bikes or parts are available, because each delivery office has an operating budget which makes no provision for spares, repairs, or for the people to carry them out. In effect, Royal Mail have forced posties off bikes and into cars just so they can get the job done.

Meanwhile, collections staff risk losing their driving licenses and jobs every time they go out on collection due to the totally unrealistic schedules they are given to complete a round. The only way to complete a collection round on schedule is to break the law. Yet anyone caught speeding, or parking on a yellow line faces dismissal.

What was once a vital utility, an essential part of urban and rural life has been ground down over the last ten years by the likes of Leighton, Mandelson and Crozier. Leighton and Crozier hacked away in order to pad out their own pay packets, while Mandelson has been doing his level-best to flog off the profitable parts of the business to his pals at TNT and dismantle the universal service agreement whereby every address in the UK is entitled to one delivery 6 days a week.

Don't forget there's a shareholder's meeting coming up soon (i.e. 'General Election') and you're all entitled to a say.
Why not put Royal Mail up there on the list of questions - along with education, banks, police and the NHS - to be asked when the rosette wearers start knocking on your door ...?

LondonCallin - nope - it was in the West End not far from Hyde Park. I used to go that way to work.

that safety aspect is a bit of a cover up i think, part of the reason for getting rid of bikes is that they want us postmen/women to 'team up' in vans and deliver all the packets (as well as the letters that would normally get covered by one walk), hence getting rid of a van driver duty which would normally take the larger parcels that the foot/bicycle delivery couldn't carry. Or in the case of walks that are within a mile radius of the office we will be given a 'HCT' (high capacity trolly, basically two big plastic boxes with wheels..and are not very secure) and told to take everything, large packets included.

on a personal level it takes me 10 mins to cycle from the office to my first delivery point (uphill i might add), pushing a 'HCT' i suspect would take nearly three times that.

its a crock of shit to be honest, and i suspect we will all be on strike in a few months. perfect.

This is a typical knee-jerk reaction to the press headlines. How can they not assess the danger to other road users, the pollution, the noise, etc. Me thinks that this Crozier bloke might have some friends leasing vans.....?

This is depressing news.

I wonder if Royal Mail has considered that making deliveries by bicycle increases the fitness of its workforce, which ought to mean they miss fewer days through illness.

I've had several close calls with Post Office vans. They are amongst the worst offenders with regard to road safety and even rank ahead of BMWs in terms of aggressive and unpredictable driving standards. On one memorable occasion I was on a cyclepath in London on a backstreet going round a corner when a van came barrelling round the corner in the other direction, oblivious to the fact that it was a one-way street and I was going the right way while he wasn't. I can remember the look of shock on the driver's face as he saw me at the last second and had to swerve. I had a very close call when I was where I was supposed to be and supposedly, somewhere safe.

Just how the Post Office will meet its targets on reducing carbon emissions and reducing costs with this ill-conceived plan escapes me.

This is where Charlie needs to stick his oar in, rather than getting all worked up about architecture.

Well, what residential areas NEED is yet more delivery vans staffed by overworked people working to unrealistic targets, isn't it? Stands to reason.

FFS.