Royal Mail scraps plans to axe early deliveries following Mail on Sunday Campaign
CONSIGNIA has been forced to scrap controversial plans to end early-morning deliveries following a campaign by The Mail on Sunday to save the Royal Mail.
But Consignia chief executive John Roberts has warned that the price of keeping early-morning deliveries could be thousands more job losses.
And he also revealed Germany’s privatised post office wants to ‘ cherrypick’ Consignia’s business post service.
Mr Roberts praised The Mail on Sunday for highlighting the problems faced by Consignia, formerly the Post Office, as it battles to slash losses in the face of competition and union militancy.
Our Save The Royal Mail campaign, launched last week, attracted massive support. The vast majority of the 10,000 readers who responded are in favour of keeping early-morning deliveries.
Mr Roberts said: ‘The results of The Mail on Sunday campaign are remarkable and I commend the newspaper for starting a debate on the issue.
‘I can certainly promise that there will not be any daily deliveries – except to the most outlying areas – in the afternoon. And we are now consulting, in a very real sense, our customers on this issue. If the result of this consultation mirrors your own campaign, then we would have to think again about our proposal to have a single delivery over the morning and early deliveries to businesses.
‘But there would be a price for a change in our strategy. Either the price of stamps would have to go up, and that is up to the regulator, or we would have to consider reducing our costs. They are too high and we face losing our most profitable business through competition forced on us by the regulator.’
Talks are now being held with the unions about job cuts aimed at saving £1.2 billion. Mr Roberts confirmed that up to 30,000 jobs would have to go over the next two years.
‘As far as possible, we will do this through voluntary redundancy and natural wastage,’ he said. ‘But if foreign companies come in and cherrypick our most profitable businesses, then we will be facing a crisis.’ Mr Roberts revealed that Germany’s privatised post office, Deutsche Post, had recently approached Consignia to take away its business post.
‘The Germans want to take our business customers’ mail from their premises and deliver to our post offices around the country,’ he said.
‘They then want us to deliver the post – the most loss-making part of the business. The amazing thing is that we cannot tell them to go away. If there is a dispute over price, the regulator will decide. It is crazy. I am expecting the Dutch to approach us soon.’ But he confirmed the Post Office still beats most of its European and American counterparts over the price of a first-class stamp and next-day delivery. At 27p, it is almost four times cheaper to send a first-class letter weighing up to 60g in the UK than in Germany.
Meanwhile, the Post Office could face a Treasury investigation into claims by watchdogs that £2.5billion of taxpayers’ money has ‘disappeared’.
An inquiry by Postwatch claims that the cash has vanished into a ‘black hole’ of what it condemns as illadvised investments over the past five years.
The watchdog will this week meet to decide whether to ask the Treasury to launch its own investigation.
