An investigation by the Oxford Mail has revealed that 20 per cent of first class post in Oxfordshire is delivered late.

The paper sent out 80 first class letters - 40 to addresses in Oxfordshire from outside the county and 40 from locations in the rest of Britain to the county - but only 55 arrived on time the next day.

The paper reported that although seven letters could not be confirmed as being delivered on time, 12 letters took two days to arrive and four letters took three days.

One letter even took 11 days to arrive at the paper's district office in Didcot - 14 miles from its source at the Mail's head office in Oxford.

Editor Simon O'Neill said: "We ran our investigation because the postal service in Oxfordshire is in crisis and I don't use that word lightly.

"There is a history of bad industrial relations and inefficiency, the latest example of which was a damaging unofficial strike earlier this year, leading to huge backlogs of mail.

"Add the current upheaval in the postal service nationally and it was clear that there was a problem. We asked readers to tell us about their problems with Royal Mail and the letters and phone calls flooded in.

"Tales of dumped mailbags, post not arriving, or arriving days and even weeks late and general poor service led us to carry out the survey as part of our Post In Crisis campaign. Even though the results were not good, they were actually better than we thought they would be, which says a lot about confidence in the current postal service.

"The whole sorry mess is summed up by the fact that some staff at The Oxford Mail, who live outside the county, will not post letters in Oxfordshire and we often follow up letters to people with phone calls to check that they have arrived!

"We will be carrying out regular surveys from now on and will probably make them bigger to get a better idea of how the service is faring."

The Royal Mail's area general manager Michael Stockdale told the paper: "While the findings of the Oxford Mail survey are lower than the current independent-assessed performance level, we do acknoeledge that our performance in Oxford is below target and we would offer our apologies to any customer who is experiencing problems.

"All of our people in Oxfordshire, front-line staff and managers, are working very hard to ensure that targets are met and that the current improving trend continues."

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