Sir Roger Gale
Member of Parliament for Herne Bay and Sandwich (including West Thanet)
 

Complaints about poor postal delivery services in Herne Bay have led the Bay`s MP, Roger Gale, to take the issue of reorganisation up with senior post office management.
 
As the MP`s office continues to receive expressions of concern, Roger Gale says:
 
“Initially – and understandably – the official explanation for delay was that the snowfall had impeded deliveries to the sorting office.
 
I know my local postmen and women very well and I know that they and their local Manager make a great effort to get the mail out, whatever the weather.
 
It seems, though, as though a computerised reorganisation of the postman`s “walk” lies at the heart of the problem.  This scheme, being piloted in Herne Bay, does not bode well for the County-wide reorganisation that is planned for sorting and delivery offices.
 
The removal of the postman`s time-honoured bicycles and their replacement with “buddy vans” carrying two postmen to cover two “walks” does not appear to have helped either: I understand that if two people cannot deliver the whole of Walk A and Walk B in one day then any remaining mail is rolled over to the following day – with obvious consequences.
 
I do not want to be too harsh as all new systems take time to bed down but I`m not convinced that the run-in to Christmas was the best time to try to make changes and from the experience of my constituents it is clear that a lot of “fine-tuning” is going to have to be done to satisfy the people – the Royal Mail customers – of Herne Bay.”

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