UK Royal Mail bitten by watchdog cost

POSTWATCH, the consumer postal watchdog funded by the Royal Mail, spent more than pounds 414,000 on networking and travel last year – over pounds 8,000 per member of staff. The watchdog, whose lavish spending has angered the lossmaking mail delivery firm, also spent a further pounds 167,000 on furniture, according to its annual report. The furnishing and fittings bill comes on top of a pounds 350,000 bill for chairs, desks and other fixtures the previous year – which the regulator said it needed because it was starting from scratch. A spokesman for Postwatch said yesterday that a large amount of this had been spent on refurbishing floors and on an access system and furniture for an office in Ely, and new desks, cabinets and chairs in London. “What are they buying now, Louis XIV chairs?” said one postal industry source yesterday. Royal Mail paid pounds 10m towards the watchdog last year. Postwatch was set up as a successor to POUNC, the Post Office Users Council, which cost just pounds 800,000 a year. Postwatch spent 10 times that this year and claimed it could not put a resource accounting and budgeting system in place because of “budgetary restraints”. After spending pounds 8.3m last year – just under the previous year’s pounds 8.54m – it ended up with an operating deficit of pounds 441,000. The organisation says it needs to spend more money than POUNC to enable its regional members to attend meetings. It has also increased the number of employees to an average of 73 this year, compared with 46 last year. According to Postwatch’s annual report, its successes this year include making Parcelforce pay for the cost of some fish that had not been sent to a customer because it had gone off. It also made Parcelforce pay almost pounds 2,000 in compensation to a musician whose French horn had been bent in the post.