ROYAL MAIL officials were today squaring up to business leaders in York over the issue of late postal deliveries.

The gathering, including many organisations representing hundreds of firms, such as the 750-member York and North Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce, as well as major employers like the Shepherd Building Group, were confronting Andrew Lamb, Royal Mail's Yorkshire area regional manager and his deputy, Phil Crossley.

Many of the businesses, ranging from law firms and accountancy practices to estate agents and architects, were thrown into disarray by Royal Mail's cost-cutting exercise to reduce its service from two deliveries to one.

They accepted that there would be one delivery, but demanded that the 8am delivery should survive, rather than having to receive post by lunchtime or even later.

Adam Sinclair, chairman of the York Chamber of Trade, was this afternoon expected to list some of the major objections. They included:

Disruption to staff who had been employed specifically to open early-morning mail

Changing staff schedules and disrupting the entire working day

Inability to deal with time-sensitive legal contracts

Risks to customer service because of next-day rather than same-day responses

Scrambling to bank cheques which had arrived in the late post

Loss of competitive edge, particularly in areas where firms are judged by both speed and efficiency.

Mr Sinclair is particularly concerned that the same system - and problems - were about to be rolled out to the entire nation, and he called for business to be supported and prioritised by Royal Mail.

Mr Lamb was expected to point out that there had been ongoing changes, the effects of which would be to cut down on delivery times.

Meanwhile, the protests continued to flow into the Evening Press offices.

One of them was from Ian Thompson, managing director of Barnitts, the home and gardens store in Colliergate, York.

He argued that no consideration was given by Royal Mail to businesses in pedestrianised areas of York under the new postal delivery arrangements.

Mr Thompson has learned to accept - and even appreciate - that Colliergate becomes a no-vehicle area from 11am until 4pm, but now that his post often arrives after pedestrianisation time it means that mail-ordered goods cannot go out in his vans until the following day. And his invoices are often also a day behind.

He said: "We have grown used to the pedestrianisation restrictions and have been able to work around them in the past because of postal deliveries in time for our opening at 8.30am, but this makes life very difficult."

He warned: "If this doesn't improve we are going to get in touch with our suppliers and ask them to cut out the post in favour of fax and email."

Updated: 10:43 Friday, February 13, 2004