TNT Post has found its postal delivery practices being called into question after BBC London News reported on a member of the public finding piles of confidential post dumped in a bush last month.

The woman told the BBC earlier this week that she had alerted TNT Post to the find in north London at the time but was told it could not recover the post as the bush was too thorny. Twelve days later, she recovered it herself without sustaining a scratch, she said in the report, finding letters from banks and medical organisations, among others.

A spokesman for TNT Post apologised for the incident, telling MT it was “extremely disappointed” the situation had arisen and had taken so long to resolve.

“As you would expect, we are currently investigating the reasons behind this,” he said. “It is wholly unacceptable to us that any mail was not delivered to households in the first place and there appears to have been a localised operational failure to recover all the mail once we had been made aware of the incident.”

Mail security was “a top priority” for the firm, added the spokesman, and 98.5% of mail is being delivered on the first attempt.

Harrow Council

This is not the first time TNT Post’s delivery capability has been called into question. Earlier this year, Harrow Council was forced to send an apology to 24,000 households and defer their initial council tax payments for the year after a number of bills being delivered by TNT Post arrived late.

The letter apologising, which was sent via Royal Mail, cost the council over £12,800. A council spokeswoman told MT it was seeking to recoup this from TNT Post. “We will not be using TNT Post for these mail-outs in future,” she added.

The TNT spokesman confirmed it had taken responsibility for the “administrative error” and had agreed with Harrow Council to cover any additional costs.

In spring last year, meanwhile, Channel 4’s Dispatches highlighted TNT Post staff leaving letters unsupervised for prolonged periods during delivery operations.  In response, TNT Post UK CEO Nick Wells issued an online statement promising mail security would be stepped up.

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