Crichton Street Collection Office

I attended a meeting with representatives of Royal Mail on Friday to raise the concerns of my constituents about changes to the Royal Mail collection service. Royal Mail has closed its collection office at Crichton Street and replaced it with services which I and many others have described as inadequate.


Royal Mail appear not to have listened to the representations made to them. I wanted to hear how they are going to ameliorate the problems which they have now created for themselves.'



The office at Crichton Street is owned by the City Council and I have written to the Chief Executive and to Royal Mail asking whether any efforts could have been made to either bring Crichton Street up to scratch or to find an alternative site within the city centre which would have satisfied Royal Mail's requirements and also would have allowed the City Council to help in the delivery of an important public service to the people of Dundee.


I thought that the meeting was useful to give Royal Mail a clear understanding of the level of unhappiness amongst people in the West End. Royal Mail undertook to look at whether the disabled access at Baird Avenue was adequate, the council undertook to look at winter maintenance around Royal Mail sites.

The real issue here is the situation which Royal Mail finds itself in, where it has to operate more and more like a private company whilst still operating under regulations which assume that it is a public service. I think that the City Council would have had a much stronger case if the Administration had not recently pushed through a policy of removing our postal services from Royal Mail. I will continue to make the case that the council should consider much more than the bottom line when looking at such contracts. What monetary value can we put on the diminution of service now received by our constituents from the Royal Mail which the actions of the City Council have contributed to? If we support public services, we should say so, and act accordingly.