Tag: Royal Mail

UK Post office bureau de change kiosks now in selected WHSmith stores (UK)

Posted by | Jun 19, 2008 | |

People going abroad this year can now pick up their holiday money at the same time as their summer reads. Shoppers dashing around the high street for last minute holiday bits and pieces will be able to use 50 new Post Office bureau de change kiosks at selected branches of WHSmith.

Most of the kiosks – located in prime shopping centre and high street locations – will be open seven days a week and close later than traditional Post Office bureaux, giving holidaymakers even more choice and convenience in how and when they purchase travel money in advance of their break.

The kiosks are opening at a rate of five per week; participating WHSmith shops will display a Post Office sign showing the latest foreign exchange rates in the store window.

Post Office kiosks have already opened in 30 WHSmith stores including Exeter, Bristol, Brent Cross, Kingston-upon-Thames and Sheffield. All fifty branches will be fully operational by the autumn.

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Royal Mail wins city contract (UK)

Posted by | Jun 19, 2008 | |

Royal Mail has won a contract with Manchester city council worth GBP 4.2m initially, with the potential to grow to GBP 8.4m.

Royal Mail will handle all of the council’s mail and expects to cut the authority’s bills by increasing the amount of post which can be sorted mechanically and by introducing more cost-effective mail products.

The contract will run for two years initially but will be extended for a further two if savings targets are met.

Dave Hulton, Royal Mail’s relationship manager in Manchester, said he was confident of doing so.

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No missing mail with RFID tags, says European Commission

Posted by | Jun 19, 2008 | |

With full liberalisation of all the EU’s national postal services planned for 2013, the likely increase in the number of operators will make improved traceability of sent items a vital necessity to avoid dysfunctions, the European Commission has underlined, calling for the deployment of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chips to tackle the issue.

Indeed, all EU member states are requested to abolish lingering national monopolies on postal services by December 2012 at the latest. While the intention is to open the market to new entrants and make mail deliveries more efficient across Europe, there is also a risk that, with an increased number of actors involved in the process, items may get lost.

Innovations that can ensure the safe management of items are therefore needed and the Commission is looking at RFID as the “right” technology to do this.

Radio Frequency Identification chips have been already deployed by postal companies in around 50 countries across the world to measure the quality of their services.

Item-level tracking implies a massive deployment of RFID, potentially involving all the items sent. This would result in a close-to-zero risk of failed delivery.

To make this possible, RFID chips would have to be cheap, tiny, easily available and based on common standards. High-tech companies, like Hitachi or Motorola, are currently working to make chips more affordable and functional. The size has already decreased so much that now experts do not talk of chips, but of “smart dust”.

But interoperability remains a key concern. At the beginning of the year, the European Commission launched a two-year project called GRIFS to build a global RFID standards forum. All stakeholders agree on the need of talking and finding common grounds.

Common standards would indeed pave the way for a broader application of RFID technologies for end-users and not just service providers. Radio Frequency Identification tags could then become a day-to-day technology used for making payments through mobile phones or to check the origin of food purchased in a supermarket. The final stage would be the so-called ‘Internet of Things’, where active RFID could make objects communicate between themselves to automatically address daily needs.

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CWU green lights more postal strikes (UK)

Posted by | Jun 19, 2008 | |

The Communications Workers Union (CWU) has voted for another round of strikes at Royal Mail, dealing a blow to the direct marketing industry after last year’s strikes cost the sector GBP 8m.
The decision comes despite the CWU’s resolution after last year’s strikes to concentrate on lobbying the government rather than resorting to industrial action.
The vote was held at last week’s union conference, where deputy general secretary Dave Ward called for the dismissal of Adam Crozier and Allan Leighton.
The decision to return to strike action was in response to pension changes, post office closures and job losses at Royal Mail. Last year’s strike action was a major factor in Royal Mail’s failure to meet operational targets.
The strike also put a major strain on the CWU’s finances amid falling membership numbers. The union admitted at last week’s conference that it needs to make some ‘difficult and unpalatable decisions’, and would be looking to identify savings in its budget.
However, the union stressed that it is still in a strong enough position to protect its members’ rights. CWU senior deputy general secretary Tony Kearns says: “Let Royal Mail – or whoever else – be in no doubt that if they take us on we will do whatever is necessary to ensure we are in a position to fight on behalf of our members.”

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Postcomm consults on licence for Mr Wesley Pollock (trading as Scotpost) (UK)

Posted by | Jun 19, 2008 | |

Postcomm today began a 30 day consultation on the proposed grant of a postal operator’s licence to Mr Wesley Pollock, a sole trader trading as Scotpost.

Under the licensing framework that took effect from 1 January 2006 and was amended in January 2008, the licence would:

– allow Mr Pollock to provide all types of postal service;
– be issued for a rolling ten year period; and
require him to comply with codes of practice on mail integrity (safety and security of the mail) and common operational procedures (designed to ensure the multi-operator market works well in practice).

The consultation notice and proposed licence can be found on the Scotpost consultation page.

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