Tag: Postwatch

Select Committee enquiry into post office closures

Posted by | Nov 30, 2007 | |

In a Westminster Hall debate by MPs this week on the programme of 2,500 post office closures, Peter Luff, Chairman of the relevant Select Committee, stated:

“It is a great pleasure that the swansong debate of the Select Committee on Trade and Industry, now the Select Committee on Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, should be so popular. I am informed by the Speaker’s Office that this is the most popular ever Westminster Hall debate on a Select Committee report.”

“The new Select Committee will launch an inquiry early in the new year into the progress of the post office closure process. We will have hearings, probably in late January or early February, and will revisit the process then, because this matter is obviously of deep concern to many colleagues.”

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Make the most of your Christmas post

Posted by | Nov 27, 2007 | |

Every year customers take their time choosing Christmas cards for friends and relatives. They then spend time carefully thinking up messages that carry their love and best wishes.

According to Royal Mail some 400 million Christmas cards are poorly addressed or badly written every year. About 5 million are so badly addressed or just not addressed at all that they cannot be delivered. Many cards are eventually destroyed.

It could also be the case this year that cards and packets are not delivered because the incorrect postage has been used. Although pricing in proportion was in place last December because it was new the Royal Mail adopted a common sense approach to surcharging for underpaid postage and largely waived it. This is the first Christmas when Royal Mail will be surcharging receiving customers for cards and packets failing the pricing in proportion test. Receiving customers might find themselves having to queue, at this busy time of year, at Callers Offices to pay the underpaid postage plus the GBP 1 per item handling fee.

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Missing Postwatch already?

Posted by | Nov 19, 2007 | |

Last week, the House of Lords published a Select Committee report on the UK economic regulators including Postcomm. In Chapter 5 of the report, there is a section entitled “How are consumer interests protected in the regulatory state?”

This looks at models of consumer representation and comparisons are made between the integrated model of the Ofcom Consumer Panel and the Financial Services Consumer Panel – where the consumer body sits in the regulator – and the alternative standalone model of Postwatch and Energywatch – where the consumer body sits outside the regulator.

The report concludes that:

– “Different consumer representation models operate in the regulatory state and all the regulators were vociferous in justifying their particular model. However, we believe that stand alone consumer representation bodies are more transparent and more effective.”

– “The new landscape for consumer representation has been created by the Consumers, Estate Agents and Redress Act 2007 [Consumer Voice]. We are sceptical that the proposed new arrangements will lead to improvements in consumer representation but we recognise that it is too early to judge whether our scepticism is justified. The new arrangements will need careful monitoring and this is a role that might be taken up by a sessional Committee on regulators.”

This is a reference to the fact that the CEAR Act will combine both Postwatch and Energywatch with the National Consumer Council so that, from October 2008, there will not be a sector-specific consumer body for postal services.

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Do you know of a local "Mailwatch"?

Posted by | Nov 5, 2007 | |

Postwatch’s Regions have outreach programmes which involve regular meetings with local authorities and social users. Recently our Greater London Region held one of its regular residents’ workshops and a new attendee was someone who has assisted his local Member of Parliament in setting up a local group to tackle problems of poor postal service locally.

Local residents in the Hornsey & Wood Green area of north London intend to set up a local “Mailwatch” pressure group with the objective of monitoring poor service delivered by Royal Mail in the area and finding ways of encouraging Royal Mail to improve.

Residents have for too long had to contend with mail which has been late, missing, delivered to the wrong address or damaged to which Royal Mail staff have too often responded with a couldn’t care less attitude.

The local group is grateful for the support of Postwatch, but it is also very keen to make contact with any other local residents’ groups which have tackled similar issues, and in particular which have had some success, so that they can learn from others’ methods and experiences.

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Royal Mail stops Sunday collections

Posted by | Oct 27, 2007 | |

Royal Mail is to stop Sunday collections from post boxes and business from tomorrow.

The company, which introduced the service in 1990, had collected from 18,000 post boxes across the UK each Sunday.

But it said there was limited customer demand and that Sunday collections accounted for less than 1 pct of all mail posted each week.

Royal Mail said it also cost four times as much to handle Sunday mail compared to items collected on other days.

Information on the affected post boxes has been changed and those in areas of high usage will be monitored and emptied if there is a risk of overflowing.

Postal watchdog Postwatch carried out a survey into the demand for Sunday collections earlier this year and found that 68 pct of people said they used the service ‘very seldom’ or ‘never’.

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