A priority for Consumer Focus Post has been to evaluate the performance of mail services in and out of Northern Ireland – to establish the ‘connectedness’ of Northern Ireland’s social and business consumers with the neighbouring communities and economies in Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland.
In March 2010 we published our research findings regarding the standard cross-border mail service to and from the Irish Republic and made a number of recommendations about how that service can, and should, be improved.
This report describes a parallel piece of research into the performance of the First Class mail service between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. We chose to study First Class rather than Second Class mail because it is the service which consumers are likely to use for time-critical items and for which they are consequently paying a price premium. Both this research and the crossborder research were carried out for us by Ipsos MORI. The full report Improving First Class mail services between Northern Ireland and Great Britain can be downloaded below.
This introduction to the Ipsos MORI report:
- explains the context of the research
- discusses the main findings from the Ipsos MORI research
- outlines our conclusions based on that research
- makes recommendations to consumers, in the light of these conclusions, about how to obtain value for money in the way they use the postal services
- makes recommendations to Royal Mail and Postcomm on improving the mail service and the relevant performance monitoring statistics which are published under the terms of Royal Mail’s licence
By publishing this introduction and the full Ipsos MORI report, we hope to stimulate discussion among Northern Ireland’s social and business users and other stakeholders about the postal services they need and the postal services which are currently provided by Royal Mail under its licence issued by the Regulator, Postcomm. This is of particular importance in a year when all aspects of the Universal Postal Obligation (USO) operated by Royal Mail are under review.
The full research report is also available: Ipsos MORI: Improving First Class mail services between Northern Ireland and Great Britain
