The Royal Mail have claimed part of their delivery problems in Dunfermline have been caused by the state of the pavements and roads, with five of their staff having accidents.
The postal service in the town has been criticised, with some residents complaining of Christmas mail arriving over the last two weeks and some post reaching its destination only after having been sorted in England.
It is understood mail deliveries were made on Sunday in Dunfermline and west Fife and that this will be repeated this Sunday in an effort to clear the backlog. However, the Royal Mail said their efforts have not been helped by the poor state of the pavements and roads.
A Royal Mail spokeswoman said, “These conditions obviously mean delivery routes have taken longer to complete.”
Dunfermline and West Fife MP Thomas Docherty said he has sympathy for the Royal Mail following a meeting with them at which they outlined a strategy for dealing with the backlog of mail in Dunfermline.
The Labour politician met mail bosses in light of complaints from some of Mr Docherty’s constituents. He said Royal Mail bosses feel some roads in Fife were not passable, making it difficult for their staff to make deliveries.
“I think a lot of places in Dunfermline would have been very slippery and I know of one postal employee who was badly injured as a result of falling in the town,” he added. “Royal Mail have said they will share a report on the whole postal matter with me.”Three point planThe Labour politician said Royal Mail now have a three “key point” plan, which includes trying to get rid of the mail backlog by this weekend.
“The meeting was very productive hopefully we will get progress with the Royal Mail,” he said. “The mail bosses accept there have been problems and basically I think it’s important for people to know. At the meeting we discussed three key points. These were that the Royal Mail accepts that there have been problems.
“They (Royal Mail) told me they were planning on doing Sunday deliveries last weekend, and could do another one this coming weekend because of the bad weather.
The second point was that they said they would have the backlog cleared by this weekend, and the third one was that they told me not all the problems were down to their sorting office.”
Fife Council head of transport Dr Bob McLellan, was “disappointed” Royal Mail had not contacted the local authority earlier to share its concerns “when we may have been able to assist them.”
“We are in dialogue with Royal Mail now to resolve this for the future,” he said.
Dr McLellan added that since early last month there had been difficult conditions on Fife’s roads and paths, and indeed across the country, due to the extreme and prolonged severe weather.
“We regret to hear that some Royal Mail employees have been involved in accidents and we would like to reassure them that all available council and external resources have been working extremely hard to clear Fife’s roads and footpaths on a priority basis since this severe weather began.”
He said the work had been carried out in line with the council’s winter gritting and snow clearing policy, which was agreed last August. He added that the council had been operating in accordance with the Scottish Salt Group’s salt conservation procedures since December 6. “To infer that inadequate salt was used is completely unfounded.
“In fact, last weekend 1000 tonnes of salt was used across Fife compared with 235 tonnes the previous weekend, and salt levels were all in line with the Scottish Salt Group’s guidance.”