Scotland has the worst postal service in the UK, according to the Royal Mail’s own fi gures. The six poorest performing postcode areas in Britain for delivering fi rst-class mail the next day are north of the border and had the lowest percentage of post delivered ontime in the fi rst quarter of 2007.

In Scotland, only Glasgow managed to scrape into the top 20 best performing areas, in 18th place. Across Britain, Royal Mail achieved 93 per cent of fi rst-class post delivered the next working day, meeting their UK minimumtarget.

Royal Mail manager John Manson said: “Unfortunately, for the first quarter of 2007-8 our quality of service to customers in the east of Scotland postcode areas was below our usualhigh standard.

“This was because of a short period of unoffi cial industrial action, which had a knock-on effect,” he said.