ADAM CROZIER, chief executive of Royal Mail, was paid almost £3m last year despite a rise in complaints over late, lost and stolen letters.

The pay package, thought to be the highest paid to a public sector employee in Britain, puts Crozier, 41, on a par with the chief executives of big private-sector companies.

The scale of payments to Crozier, a former head of the Football Association, will be detailed in Royal Mail’s annual results this week. It is likely to spark criticism from unions representing postal workers and from consumers.

Crozier’s pay package consisted of basic salary, a cash bonus and pension payments. According to Royal Mail’s last pay disclosure, he was on a basic salary of £500,000 a year and was offered an annual cash bonus of £300,000.

The bulk of his package, expected to total between £2.7m and £2.9m, comes from a share award scheme called a long-term incentive plan. These are common in the private sector but rare for state employees.

Royal Mail will justify the payments partly by pointing out that performance has improved. The company will argue that service is now the best it has been for 10 years. In addition, it will say it is rewarding Crozier for its strong financial results. Profits for last year will top £500m. But customer complaints have risen by more than 300% in two years and are estimated to be at 40,000 a year.

Details also emerged recently of fraud by postal workers. Last month police broke up a London sorting office gang that had drained £30m out of private bank accounts using cheque books stolen in the post. Bank card issuers complained of a 62% rise in the number stolen in the post last year.

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