Post Office chief wants to 'fix the Post Office'

Alan Cook is happiest when confronting a crisis. So as managing director of Post Office Limited, it seems he has found the perfect job as he sets about axeing 2,500 branches between now and November next year against a backdrop of increasing public anger.

Cook, 53, is known as 'Mr Fixit' and was brought in 16 months ago by Royal Mail chairman Allan Leighton and paid GBP 250,000 a year to plug losses of GBP 4 million a week, with the promise of a large bonus if he could rescue the sinking business.

'I like fixing things, fixing businesses,' he says. 'I'm at my best when I go in somewhere and things are looking desperate. Then after a while employees start saying "good – things are changing for the better".

I like that.' But that is the opposite of what many disheartened employees are saying about the new hard-sell approach.

Since Cook came on board, the Post Office has shifted more than 550,000 financial products – everything from car cover to travel insurance.

As Financial Mail reported last week, many staff say the aggressive selling to customers risks damaging the Post Office's trusted brand.

Cook counters by saying that a more businesslike approach is essential for survival.

Fixing, axeing, whatever you want to call it, certainly dominates his CV, especially in the latter half of his career. In the early Nineties, towards the last third of a commendably loyal 31 years at Prudential, which involved stints in most parts of the business, he was responsible as head of general insurance operations for cutting 26 administrative centres to five, with the loss of 2,000 jobs.

A little later, during three years at the Pru's American offshoot, Jackson National Life, he was asked to consolidate the company's outlying administrative offices into its Michigan-based head office.

Indeed, one of his most cherished possessions on his open-plan desk at the Post Office's headquarters on the northern edge of the City is a clock presented to him for displaying ' outstanding leadership in taking Jackson National Life to new horizons'.

'There's not a trace of blood on it,' he says with a straight face.

A four-year stint as boss of National Savings required Cook to do little axewielding, but the Post Office has presented him with his biggest challenge.

Already he has stealthily reduced the number of staff directly employed by Post Office Ltd from 11,300 to 10,000.

But that pruning pales into insignificance compared with what he is now doing with post office branches. He has already sent out 'hit teams' to nine of the 47 areas into which he has broken-the network. Their job is to identify-those branches to be included in the first wave of closures that will take place in the New Year.

Cook seems to be relishing it all.

'Look, the Post Office has been dogged by uncertainty for far too long,' he says.

'But since the Government confirmed in May that it would support the network to the tune of GBP 150 million a year – but only if we boiled it down to 12,000 branches – it's given us a sense of purpose. The sooner we get the job done, the sooner confidence will return to the post office network.' He doesn't need reminding that most of the 24 million people who use their local post office every week love it and see it as an essential part of their community. Financial Mail has waged a hugely popular Save Our Post Offices campaign for the past five years and has repeatedly seen the hostility caused by closures.

Cook is aware the shutdowns will need to be handled sensitively, though he is quick to point out that 800 branches currently conduct fewer than 16 transactions a week each – sales figures that no other retail business, mutual or plc, would tolerate. 'In the past, when the Post Office has demanded that the branch network shrink, branches have been shut according to the wishes of subpostmasters, not customers,' he says.

'This time round, that isn't going to happen. If a subpostmaster wants out, but we think his branch has a role to play in the network's future, we'll move in another subpostmaster.

'What is key is that we end up with a sustainable branch network that by 2011 – when the current five-year business plan draws to an end – is making profits.' In the next 16 months, Cook expects the closure programme to consume most of his waking hours, though he is determined to find time to walk in the Lake District with Anita, his wife of 32 years with whom he shares a home in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire.

'If this is my last fulltime job – and it could well be given I intend staying until 2011 – I want to be remembered as the man who fixed the Post Office,' he says.

With that wish, 'Mr Fixit' disappears back to head office. There is not a moment to waste – employees at the Crown post offices are on the verge of yet more strikes.

There is more fixing, more axeing to be done.