Lost mail campaign gets lost in post

LONDON (Reuters) - A postal campaign to highlight the quantity of letters that go missing each year has been given a stamp of authority after none of the letters arrived at their intended destination.


The Sunday Telegraph said letters sent by Postwatch, the postal services monitoring group, to 49 members of parliament urging them to report misdelivered or missing mail disappeared without trace.


Conservative Gillian Shephard, one of the intended recipients of the letters promoting the 'Stamp out Misdelivered Mail' campaign said she had written to the chairman of the Royal Mail to complain but to date had received no reply.


"Perhaps I should have faxed him," she was quoted by the newspaper as saying.


The Royal Mail, accused by Postwatch of losing more than 14 million letters a year despite making substantial profits last year, said it had no record of the missing letters.


"We have conducted a full investigation and have found no evidence of any problems in the relevant postal areas," a spokesman told the newspaper. "As far as we are concerned, the letters are not in our system."