Royal Mail have advised that the following areas are currently seeing delays to deliveries due to high levels of sick absence, resourcing, or other local factors. Customer should expect delays in these areas:

• Birchwood DO (WA3)
• Sandhurst DO (GU46 and GU47)
• Sunbury on Thames DO (TW16)
• Woodbridge DO (IP12 and IP13)
• Yatton SUDO (BS49)

We receive a large amount of complaints regarding tracked mail that has been sent to HMRC and has not been signed for at the destination so wanted to make customers aware of the issues we are currently seeing. The majority of items that we post to HMRC particularly to their BX9 postal address show the item having being dispatched to Royal Mail and show no further tracking appearing to be stuck "in transit" to the destination. There are a number of threads on Google which show the same issue:

HMRC 'losing' post | AccountingWEB

Agents expect no improvement in poor HMRC service | AccountingWEB

What we have found is that HMRC receive such a large amount of tracked mail every day that they are not able to scan each individual item as having being delivered. One Royal Mail representative indicated that items arrive for HMRC in a seven tonne lorry and there is simply too much mail to mark each as delivered.

We have been made aware by one of our customers that HMRC often have received the letter but they are simply not showing up as delivered in the Royal Mail tracking information. We would advise any customers seeing an issue with delivery to HMRC to call HMRC directly as it is very likely that they have received the letter but the Royal Mail tracking has never been updated.

We would also like to advise customers that HMRC have a long delay in scanning items into the system once they have been received as they are dealing with a large backlog of mail so it may take them some time to receive items. They advise allowing 4 weeks for items to be scanned into their system.

State Pension Contributions Living Abroad - Community Forum - GOV.UK (hmrc.gov.uk)

The only advice we can give based on the articles we have found above.

· Ensure letters you send are sent to the right place and have the right identification on the letter so it can be identified. Remember these letters are scanned into a system.

· We have found in the past HMRC provides a signature for Special Delivery Mail but not for Signed for Mail or Tracked mail.

· Leave plenty of time for your mail to get there. Royal Mail says second class mail takes 2 days longer. We know from our tests second class mail can take up to a week to arrive in some places.

PC2Paper will be closed on the 29th of March for Good Friday and the 1st of April for the Bank Holiday. Any mail sent after 1pm for tracked mail and 3pm for all other mail on Thursday the 28th of March will be queued in the system and posted on Tuesday the 2nd April when we reopen.

Royal Mail have advised that not all mail was processed to schedule yesterday at its Medway Mail Processing Centre. This will cause delays to mail in the following areas:

• Medway: Some mail posted in the CT, DA, ME and TN postcode areas, due for delivery today in other parts of the UK.

This will affect all mail posted by PC2Paper as our mail passes through Medway Mail Processing after being collected from us. Customers should expect delays to mail and delays to tracked items being scanned into the system at Medway.

Royal Mail have advised that not all mail was processed to schedule yesterday at its Aberdeen and Gatwick Mail Processing Centres. Customers should expect delays to mail in the following areas:

• Aberdeen: Some mail posted in other parts of the UK, due for delivery today in the AB and ZE postcode areas.
• Gatwick: Some mail posted in other parts of the UK, due for delivery today in the BN and RH postcode areas.

Royal Mail have advised that not all mail was processed to schedule yesterday at its Chelmsford and Greenford Mail Processing Centres. Customers should expect delays in the following areas:

• Chelmsford: Some mail posted in the CM, CO and SS postcode areas, due for delivery today in other parts of the UK.
• Greenford: Some mail posted in the BFPO, HA, NW, SL, UB and W postcode areas, due for delivery today in other parts of the UK.

In addition to the above there are currently delays to deliveries in the following area due to local issues such as high levels of sick absence, resourcing, or other local factors. Customers should expect delays in the following areas:

• Birchwood DO (WA3)

Royal Mail have advised that there are currently delays in the Hendon postcode area NW4 due to local issues such as high levels of sick absence, resourcing, or other local factors. Customers should expect the delivery of mail in this area to take longer than normal.

We have been aware that Royal Mail does not always operate the service that it advertises but the recent Panorama documentary Royal Mail: Where's My Post? makes for interesting viewing. It highlights cases where people are not receiving any mail for several weeks, leading to missed medical appointments. In many places customers have found the Royal Mail service to be so bad that they have resorted to picking their mail up from the sorting office to ensure they receive it.

As part of their investigation into delayed mail the Panorama team put trackers into several items of mail to find out where they went. It found that in some cases mail was sitting in the sorting office for as many as 10 days without being delivered. It also found evidence that Royal Mail are prioritising parcels over letter mail which is many case are only being delivered once of twice a week. At PC2Paper we find that letters do take much longer than the Royal Mail estimate, 1st class which Royal Mail estimate at 1 working day generally take anything between 1-4 days, sometimes longer and 2nd class mail which Royal Mail estimates at 3 working days usually takes about a week to arrive at the destination.

In addition to the above we are finding that Royal Mail are taking longer the scan mail in at the sorting office. Whilst this used to happen on the evening it was collected from us, this is not normally happening until the next day, sometimes 2 days after Royal Mail have collected items. We are also finding that we are currently only receiving mail deliveries once or twice a week causing delays to receiving mail at our mailboxes. Royal Mail are trying to switch to a three day service rather than the six day service they are currently meant to provide but if the findings of the Panorama documentary are correct it would seem that they are already providing a limited service in many areas.

Royal Mail have advised that not all mail was processed to schedule at it Bristol Mail Processing Centre yesterday. Customer should expect delays to mail deliveries in the following areas:

• Bristol: Some mail posted in the BA, BS, GL and TA postcode areas, due for delivery today in other parts of the UK.