After a legal tussle of nearly two years, Royal Mail must pay a £9.62m fine, imposed mainly for security failings.
The Court of Appeal has upheld the fine Postcomm imposed on Royal Mail for failing to protect adequately the mail in its care, following an appeal of the penalty by Royal Mail. It follows a ‘mail integrity’ review in 2004-5, published in 2006.
The review found, most significantly, a lack of monitoring of staff recruited through agencies; ‘failure of Royal Mail to have in place, and to monitor the effectiveness of, a cross-functional team of key appointments from within the commercial, operational and security elements of its business working closely to co-ordinate loss management activities as set out in its mail protection procedures’, and a failure ‘effectively to use data to facilitate strategic security planning and deployment of security strategy’. Royal Mail did not dispute Postcomm’s finding that it breached its licence requirements to keep mail safe and secure.
For every million letters that Royal Mail handles, it estimates that it loses
730 of them. Put another way, though, during 2004-05, around 14.6 million letters, packets and parcels in Royal Mail’s care were lost, stolen, damaged or interfered with. According to the regulator: “Mail integrity is recognised as a key issue for the postal industry – customers will not use an operator if they do not have confidence in its ability to safeguard their mail.” In April 2004, Postcomm recalled, a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary showed footage that called into question Royal Mail’s mail safety and security.
