POSTWATCH ENJOYS FIRST-CLASS LIFESTYLE – Comment

WHILE the Royal Mail is striving to cut its costs, it seems that its critics at Postwatch have caught the spending habit. Since Royal Mail has to fund its own watchdog, it would be understandable if it felt more than a little aggrieved that the bill has been rising and reached Pounds 7 million last year.

The Royal Mail has to cope with its own regulator, PostComm, with which it has been battling for a workable pricing regime. But the Government judges that one organisation barking at its heels is not enough for the Royal Mail. So while the regulator sets prices, Postwatch is supposed to safeguard the interests of consumers of postal services.

And Postwatch clearly knows about consuming. Its bill for entertaining, subsistence and travel totted up to a hefty Pounds 462,000 last year.

This, Postwatch insists, is not extravagant for an organisation that has to venture outside London and recruit members for its regional councils. But while the Royal Mail is headquartered in far from luxurious style to the north of the City, Postwatch enjoys the best that the West End can offer. Inside its elegant offices, even the screen for the overhead projector comes gilt-framed.

Consumers of postal services have had a rough deal and Postwatch takes its task of campaigning on their behalf very seriously. Why it is necessary for it to be headquartered in Central London in order to berate the Royal Mail for trying to alter the metal plates that currently go on the front of post boxes is something of a mystery, however.

But the chairman, one Peter Carr, is not someone who is likely to suggest that it should be relocated to deepest suburbia. His CV on the Postwatch website provides plenty of detail on his early career but is remarkably brief on its later years.

We are told merely that “he undertook the chairmanship of the WEW Group”. That was the discount clothing operation that failed to live up to its trading name of What Everyone Wants.

Carr, however, knew exactly what he wanted and when he moved there he insisted that his contract spelt out that his two-year notice period would be honoured, even if the board unanimously decided that his performance was “inadequate”. It was, and he collected about Pounds 550,000 when he left the business in 1995 as sales plunged.

As chairman of Postwatch, he is now paid only Pounds 30,000 a year and apparently puts in much more than the two days a week that is expected for the money. But keeping costs down is probably not his strongest suit.

(c) Times Newspapers Ltd, 2003