1.5M pounds cash for urban post offices
THE Scottish Executive has agreed 1.5m pounds in funding to help support post offices in urban deprived areas. Details of the scheme are to be worked out between Consignia and the Executive by the end of the calendar year.
The money will go into a central fund to which post offices in these areas can apply for funding to help make local offices viable in areas where otherwise they are struggling financially.
It would mean support could be available for post offices like that in the Lambhill area of Glasgow where there has been widespread local concern about what the loss of the office would mean to the local area.
The move should help to quell fears that restructuring required to the Post Office network which loses £318m a year UK-wide on its day-to-day operations would mean the loss of more local offices.
Consignia, whose name is to revert back to Royal Mail, announced pre-tax losses of £1.1bn on Thursday. Allan Leighton, the chairman, outlined a three-year restructuring programme which will cost £2.4bn. Consignia will fund £1.8bn of this from previous earnings with the remaining £600m likely to come from government loan funds.
Lesley Sawers, the organisation's director of Scottish affairs, admitted this weekend that turning Consignia round and making it an efficient and profitable operation with a highly motivated workforce will be a "huge task".
But she said it was a commercial necessity that had to be faced. "There is no cavalry coming over the hill to bail the business out. We have to survive or die by our own efforts. That is a big change in culture in this organisation."
Consignia announced on Thursday that 17,000 jobs are to go over the next three years as part of a radical plan to restructure the organisation. Up to 1,500 jobs could go in Scotland, although the likelihood is that the figure will be slightly less.
Sawers admitted: "Morale in this organisation is extremely low and I think everybody accepts that. It's going to be an enormous task to turn it round."
She said she believed there was now a "wind of change" blowing through the organisation. "I get the sense from the guys at the sharp end that they've accepted that things have got to change."
She said change would take place right throughout the organisation with about a third of senior managers in the jobs losses. She readily accepts the government's statements of further changes at board level if performance does not improve. She said: "Everybody in this organisation has to add value and earn their keep."
Management is determined to change the Post Office from being a business with low-paid employees, high operating costs and low morale. They want to move it towards a better-paid workforce with a much higher morale and thus a better customer service.
She believes that the announcements made last week had drawn a line in the sand for the organisation. "What the results announcement was about was stopping this period of attrition which is hitting morale. This is the end of that. we're now going to move ahead and sort these issues out."
She said the Post Office in Scotland would move forward with a new attitude. "There has been a lot of self-flagellation in this organisation, ignoring what it is that we do best," she said. "We have to sort out what we do well and what we don't and make changes with what we don't do well."
Sawers said the mood of the business had improved since Thursday's announcement.
She said the Post Office was seeking to raise first class and second class postage by 1p each, a move that will bring in an extra £170m in a year. Opinion surveys showed that individual consumers had said they would be willing to pay more but the Post Office had to cater for the needs of business users who account for 95% of the mail posted.
