Royal Mail leaders today delivered a promise to the people of Keighley.

The company - through the Keighley News - has issued a top-level pledge that mail deliveries in the town will improve.

We tackled postal bosses after being deluged with complaints from householders and businesses about the late delivery of mail.

Post sometimes has not turned up until well into the afternoon.

Royal Mail blames the problems on teething troubles with a postal-deliveries re-organisation programme.

It promises that ultimately the public will receive a better service.

A spokesman says: "As part of a national programme to maintain and improve the quality of service to customers, we are re-organising postal deliveries to use staff time more effectively.

"There are a few teething problems as staff get used to new postal rounds.

"We apologise to customers for any inconvenience, but we are confident that within a week or two they will see an improvement to their mail service."

Royal Mail says that around 100 staff work at the Keighley delivery office, dealing daily with mail for over 38,000 addresses.

Union bosses say more mail than ever before is now being handled and delivery standards countrywide are generally below par.

Under new national standards, the target for first mail deliveries is between 7 and 9.30am.

Eddie McTigue, branch secretary of the Communication Workers' Union (CWU), told us: "Through no fault of the staff, Keighley in recent years has had one of the country's poorest records in terms of meeting mail delivery standards.

"This was due to economies made several years ago. In defence of Royal Mail it has invested an enormous amount of money in Keighley to address the situation.

"There have been teething problems due to various factors, such as staff on annual leave and people having to get accustomed to new deliveries.

"A ballot did produce a substantial result in favour of the new working arrangements, but as with any changes there is a period of adaptation."

One Haworth businessman says his post has been arriving as late as 3.30pm.

He told us: "I have been having problems for some time with the mail deliveries and it has got worse. Companies such as those in advertising have strict deadlines to meet and early postal deliveries can be essential."

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