Tag: Post Office

New Network Director for the Post Office

Posted by | Jan 10, 2007 | |

Retail executive Paula Vennells, who has worked with many of the UK’s leading consumer brands, has joined the Post Office® in the key role of Network Director.

She brings with her a wealth of experience from a range of companies including the Whitbread Group, Argos, Great Universal Stores, Sears, Dixons Stores Group, Reed International and Lunn Poly.

Paula, who also joins the Post Office Executive Team, said: “I’m very pleased to be joining the Post Office and to be taking on a central role in a network that serves 24m customers a week.”

She will report to Post Office Managing Director Alan Cook, who said: “I’m delighted to welcome Paula. She has the skills and background that make her ideally equipped for the job.”

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Rural group backs UK Post Office closure plan

Posted by | Jan 5, 2007 | |

Plans for the reorganisation of the rural postal system that include the closure of 2,500 post offices have been welcomed by a group of rural campaigners.
The plans were announced to Parliament before Christmas by trade and industry secretary Alistair Darling. He said the restructuring was needed “to protect the national network”.
He said a GBP1.7 billion support package would be provided to maintain GBP150 million-a-year payments to the rural post office network until 2011. In addition, up to 4,000 fee-free cash machines will be rolled out to help customers in areas hit by the closures, he said.
To offset the closures, he said the Post Office would set up 500 “innovative outlets” for small, remote communities, including “mobile post offices and services in village halls, community centres and pubs”.
Sylvia Brown, chief executive of Action for Communities in Rural England, said the present system of post office support was unsustainable. She said: “We want the post office subsidy transformed into a contribution towards a genuine investment plan to help retain access to a range of services within rural communities.
“We are pleased that the minister recognises the future of post office services may lie in combined delivery with pubs, shops or village halls hosting services and sharing premises to reduce overheads.”

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Royal Mail rejig creates one of the UK's largest print tenders

Posted by | Jan 5, 2007 | |

Royal Mail Group has launched a tender for its entire print requirement, worth up to GBP400m after restructuring its print management division.
A new unit of about 25 staff, Royal Mail Document Management Services, went into operation on 1 January to handle the Post Office operator’s complete print output.
Royal Mail has also advertised a four-year print management contract worth up to GBP100m per year as part of a bid to streamline its current roster of 79 UK-based print suppliers.
The postal giant is planning that the contract, one of the biggest print tenders ever to reach the UK market, will be won by either a single company or a consortium of firms.
Print involved will include point-of-sale, posters, business documents, labels and internal publications, while other functions, such as finishing, storage, fulfilment, scanning and indexing, repro and digital archiving, are also involved.
Print management sources have suggested that only business process outsourcing giants Williams Lea or Astron would have the financial clout to take on such a large contract alone.
The tender was published in December and includes work for Royal Mail’s three UK operations: its letters business, the Post Office’s retail and financial services, and Parcelforce Worldwide.
Until the contract is set up in late spring or early summer, the new unit will handle all Royal Mail’s print production requirements itself.

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Privatisation is still best option for UK Post Offices

Posted by | Jan 4, 2007 | |

Queues at post offices apparently were longer than usual in the run-up to Christmas, as people sending different sizes of cards and gift parcels had to worry about the new rules on dimensions and weights of envelopes.
For many, this experience will not be repeated. One in six of the UK’s 14,300 post offices will be closed either this year or next. Add in about 4,000 that have already gone since Labour came to power a decade ago and a third of the network will have been cut in a dozen years. Commercial banks could only stand and admire this brutal approach.
Protecting and improving public services was top of Labour’s agenda. Post offices count as a public service to many people. but not perhaps in Whitehall’s definition.
If asked, most voters would oppose closures per se. Some might think differently if presented with the figures given to ministers by Royal Mail. It claims that only 4,000 offices are profitable and network losses will double to Pounds 200 million in this financial year. Such alarming figures are inevitably a matter of choice in any integrated business, or the NHS. Internal accounting is flexible because overheads can be allocated wherever management wants. Under EU rules, the state ought not to subsidise competitive mail or parcels services. It can still fund post offices that were, until recently, used heavily as outlets for state business.

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