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After a challenging year of bad weather and industrial action in the UK, Jersey Post has worked hard to find ways to restore delivery service to acceptable levels. Emily Moore reports
AT this time of year, it is impossible to ignore the fact that Christmas is only a few weeks away.
From the tins of sweets in the supermarkets to the glittery cards and shelves of “gift suggestions” in shops throughout the Island, there is no mistaking the fact that business owners in a range of sectors are preparing for what, for many, is the busiest time of the year.
Another organisation gearing up for its peak period is Jersey Post, with the Island’s delivery teams preparing to process and deliver thousands of parcels between now and 24 December.
And Julie Thomas, the company’s managing director, is hoping that, after 12 months of “unprecedented challenges”, this year’s festive season will see much less disruption to services than last year’s.
“I joined Jersey Post last November at a time when the Island was beset by a period of bad weather, which, alongside industrial action by Royal Mail, caused disruption, which continued into the early part of this year.”
While unable to do anything about the storms and UK strikes, Julie is the first to acknowledge that these elements combined gave Islanders “a quality of service which was much poorer than usual”.
“It was a really tough time both for our teams, who worked long hours processing items when they arrived so that they could be delivered as quickly as possible, and for our customers,” she said.
And the new year did not bring an immediate change in fortunes.
“Even though Royal Mail reached an agreement with its staff and the industrial action ended, the organisation has struggled to recruit enough people and those staff shortages have continued to cause issues throughout this year,” Julie explained.
Despite these challenges, Jersey Post – whose commercial contract with Royal Mail means that any items posted in the UK bound for Jersey addresses are delivered by Jersey Post and Royal Mail delivers any UK-bound mail posted locally – has, Julie explains, continuously liaised with its UK counterpart to try and resolve the problems.
“Where we believe that mail has been unnecessarily held up in the UK, we work hard to find and present evidence of this to Royal Mail, who do listen and react,” she said.
One example of this, she adds, relates to the opening of Royal Mail’s new Midlands Super Hub in Daventry this summer. The 53-acre site – the same size as 30 football pitches – opened to a great fanfare and with state-of-the-art technology designed to process 90,000 items every hour and enhance the organisation’s parcels network.
Perhaps inevitably though, there were, as Julie explains, some “teething problems” when the facility first opened.
“The faster processing times and more efficient presentation of mail from the UK to Jersey which the Super Hub was intended to deliver should have mitigated the impact of the mail plane being withdrawn,” she said.
“However, when the hub first opened, some technical problems meant that items posted in Jersey were being sent back to us on the next boat. Of course, we were not aware of this until we received the items again. As soon as we realised what was happening, we contacted Royal Mail, who were very responsive and assigned a specific workforce to the Channel Islands lane of the sorting facility.
“While these measures took over a week to come into effect, the process is now working efficiently and service levels are, thankfully, returning to the level we would expect to see.”
Indeed, while the removal of the mail plane – which unfortunately coincided with the opening of the Super Hub – caused much consternation among Islanders, Julie says that the timeframe for most deliveries arriving from the UK is much the same as it was when the aircraft was touching down each morning.
“When we look at our quality-of-service statistics now, we can see that, as long as Islanders hit the dispatch times, local mail is delivered the day after posting,” she said. “This is also true for the local element of all UK-Jersey mail. Thanks to our work with Royal Mail and enhancements we have made to our morning operation, we are also able to ensure that all items leaving the UK marked for special delivery reach their final destination the day after they leave the port in England. This mail arriving on the morning ferry in Jersey is delivered on the same day.
“When we look back at delivery times for 2021 before the Royal Mail industrial action, we can see that the average end-to-end journey for items posted in the UK for delivery in Jersey was just shy of four days,” Julie said. “Our latest data, for the post-mail-plane era, show that this timeframe is still at less than four days, and this is largely because, although it may take slightly longer for mail to get to Jersey, the changes we have made enable us to get items out on the road a lot more quickly.”
Supporting this process, in April, Jersey Post opened a second depot at St Peter’s Technical Park, while the organisation has also invested in bigger vehicles to accommodate the ever-increasing number – and size – of parcels coming into the Island and has replanned its delivery routes.
“Because of the growth in parcels, we were running out of space at our Rue des Pres headquarters, so the new depot in St Peter means that the west of the Island now has a dedicated delivery crew,” said Julie.
“This move enabled us to redesign our area for heavy and large goods. This was vital as a number of the items we deliver for Yodel and DPD, in particular, are bulky and heavy, ranging from pet food to electric bikes.”
Having secured the DPD contract in July, and taken on the UPS delivery services in the middle of October, Jersey Post is, says Julie, reinforcing its commitment to providing a high-quality delivery service to the Island.
“If we control the end-to-end delivery, we can confidently deliver a great service for consumers,” she said. “For example, Islanders have continued to enjoy an average two-day delivery service on items ordered from Amazon because Woodside Logistics – which is part of the Jersey Post Group – collects the items directly from the Amazon depot and brings them straight to our headquarters.
“We have similar arrangements with Yodel, Hello Fresh, Mindful Chef, DPD and now UPS, all of which gives us greater control over the delivery service and helps to ensure that, after a year in which the group recorded a £6m loss, we have a strong and profitable business.”
Despite these positive moves, Julie encourages Islanders to allow plenty of time for both incoming and outgoing mail this Christmas.
“We know that Royal Mail still has staffing issues in pockets around the UK, although the company is currently undertaking a massive recruitment campaign,” she said. “Jersey Post is already ahead of the game, taking on an extra 20 or so new recruits for Christmas. So far this year, we have already processed 3.4 million items and, having seen a 30% increase in parcels coming into the Island last November, we are preparing for a similar uplift this month.
“While we will be employing extra staff and offering extra deliveries in the lead-up to Christmas, we would encourage people to post early and order early. I would recommend allowing at least three days for Amazon orders to arrive and a minimum of four working days for items sent from Jersey to reach their UK destinations.
“It is also important to package items correctly, following the advice on the Jersey Post website for mail formats and dimensions, and to fill out Customs declaration forms correctly, as these steps will minimise the risk of delays. Staff at the counters in our post office branches are always happy to advise.”
With speed of delivery a critical element of Jersey Post’s quality of service, the organisation has a group of panellists who send and receive test letters to and from the UK.
“The dates of posting and receiving that mail is then recorded and amalgamated by our mystery shopping provider, Spectos,” said Julie. “That independent assessment then gives us our quality-of-service score and, to ensure that this is as accurate as possible, Spectos are keen to recruit more panellists in Jersey and are in the process of writing to 3,000 households, inviting people to join our team of mail agents.”
