Tag: Post Office Ltd

Thousands of rural post offices are threatened with closure over the next five years as the Royal Mail transforms the network. The Government is providing the Royal Mail with Pounds 1.3 billion for a “radical transformation”, and Adam Crozier, its chief executive, said that the current situation -where a thousand post offices have fewer than six customers a day – was “not sustainable”. He said: “It’s clear that it can’t continue the way it is. The status quo is not possible.” More than 6,000 of the 8,000 rural post offices are understood to be losing money. The whole network, which has 14,500 branches, loses Pounds 2 million a week. Mr Crozier has said that he can meet his legal obligations with a network of just 4,000 offices.

Royal Mail today announced a 17.5% increase in operating profit to GBP355 million in 2005-06, a year in which new quality of service records were set with the vast majority of letters exceeding their targets.

All four of Royal Mail’s businesses – Letters, the Post Office®, Parcelforce Worldwide and the European parcels business, GLS – improved their financial performance.

The outstanding financial result has triggered a GBP418 Share in Success payment to Royal Mail’s people, amounting to a payout of nearly GBP100 million.

Allan Leighton, Royal Mail’s Chairman, said: “Royal Mail and its people have delivered record quality of service to customers and achieved an outstanding financial performance in 2005-06.

“The results show that Royal Mail has consolidated the gains it made during its three-year renewal plan when the business returned to profit and began to hit service targets instead of routinely failing them.”

The Government came under renewed attack last night over its plans for the post office network. Ministers were accused of stripping business away from post offices without first deciding how big a network of offices it would keep and of causing “deep offence and concerns” to pensioners by scrapping the Post Office Card Account. The first accusation came from Aberdeenshire West and Kincardine Liberal Democrat MP Sir Robert Smith. He launched his attack following Commons exchanges in which Scotland Minister David Cairns said it was up to regulator Postcom how many offices would be needed to keep the legal requirement for Royal Mail to maintain a universal service. Sir Robert said maintaining a network of post offices in rural Scotland could not be done on the back of Royal Mail’s universal-service obligation, which had a “very minimal base”.