Last updated at 12:52, Saturday, 26 May 2012

Ninety-five per cent of first class letters are delivered on time in Carlisle, making it the best in Britain.

According to figures released yesterday, the city is one of two areas with the best levels of delivery.

Royal Mail said the CA postcode area beat the annual first class mail target during the 2011-2012 financial year, with 95.2 per cent of first class stamped and franked mail arriving the next day, the best performance in the UK.

They said it was above the target of 93 per cent, and well ahead of the minimum standard of 91.5 per cent.

Royal Mail posted its best quarterly targets for first and second class post for almost two years, the figures showed.

In the three months to March, 93.4 per cent of first class mail was delivered the next working day, against a target of 93 per cent, while 98.9 per cent of second class post was delivered within three working days, ahead of the 98.5 per cent target.

The figures were the best since the summer of 2010, with Halifax also seeing a 95 per cent delivery rate.

Other areas with levels well above the target included Blackburn, Inverness, Aberdeen and York.

Mark Higson, Royal Mail’s managing director of operations and modernisation, said: “Our postmen and women are delivering to one of the highest and most challenging next-day performance targets in Europe while undertaking one of the UK’s biggest transformation projects.

“I pay tribute to our people’s commitment to our customers as they work hard to transform Royal Mail. The biggest period of change is under way and it is a demanding and painful process.

“We have achieved target-beating performance at national level in the most recent period with 107 postcode areas out of 118 achieving the minimum standards set for them.” The challenge now is to ensure that there is high performance in every part of the country as we continue to modernise Royal Mail.”

First published at 08:55, Saturday, 26 May 2012
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk