Post Office sheds 500 jobs

More than 500 jobs are to go at Post Office Limited (POL), the Consignia division that operates postal branches. The redundancies, out of a total POL workforce of 2,500, involve network managers and administrative posts and represent the first job losses under Consignia’s plan to reduce costs by Pounds 1.2 billion.

The percentage of cuts is higher than the overall 15 per cent that Consignia has said it is aiming for. However, a spokeswoman said that did not mean that a 20 per cent reduction would be made throughout the operation.

All the cuts in POL will be made through voluntary redundancies. Consignia said that it had no immediate plans to talk to other divisions within the group about job losses. It hopes to outline its full cost-cutting programme in the next few weeks.