Tag: Royal Mail

Britain to axe 2,500 post offices

Posted by | Feb 9, 2008 | |

British authorities say village post offices are becoming a casualty of the Internet as more people go online to pay bills and use e-mail.

“Customer numbers have gone down about 4 million per week compared to a couple of years ago and the losses are rising,” said Pat McFadden, the man named by the British government to pick 2,500 post offices for closure this year.

The British postal network loses about USD 7 million a week and hundreds of British post offices attract as few as 16 customers a week, on average, The Times of London reported Saturday.

Post offices in Britain, especially those in villages, continue to be used by large numbers of the elderly, who view the closures as a sign of disrespect toward them and fear their communities will change for the worse, the Times reported.

“No one comes into politics to do something that can be very unpopular locally to the people affected, and I am very aware of that,” McFadden said. “But sometimes governments have to take difficult decisions and make difficult changes. This is one of those occasions.”

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Royal Mail: Delivering easier ways to work for disabled people (UK)

Posted by | Feb 8, 2008 | |

Royal Mail Group has formed a new partnership with the Department for Work and Pensions as part of the Jobcentre Plus Access to Work programme, which aims to make it easier to bring more of the 6.8 million disabled men and women of working age into employment.

Access to Work currently helps thousands of workers and their employers to overcome barriers resulting from disability by offering practical advice and funding.

Royal Mail will build on the successful scheme by creating a dedicated national team which will respond to managers’ questions relating to the recruitment or the ongoing needs of disabled employees.

Working within a new ‘one-stop-shop’ Accessibility Resource Centre, advisors will support individual team leaders with the application process. Royal Mail will also pay all claims under GBP 1,000 incurred under the scheme, including premises adaptation, travel and ongoing support workers, and will share any costs in excess of this with Access to Work.

In the past, some employers have struggled to take advantage of the benefits of the scheme, but it is hoped that Royal Mail’s pilot will streamline the process considerably, galvanizing other business leaders to invest in similar, simplified arrangements.

Kay Allen, Head of Social Policy and Inclusion at Royal Mail Group, said: “Facilitating the employment of disabled workers is a key priority for us as a diversity-aware business. The best way to do this is to make it as easy as possible for our people to become “disability confident”.

“We’re aiming to use this pilot to demonstrate new ways in which large employers can take advantage of the Access to Work scheme: helping to ease some of the country’s 3.3 million economically inactive disabled people into work.”

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Post-Switch urges charities to beat Royal Mail price rise

Posted by | Feb 6, 2008 | |

Price comparison agency Post-Switch is encouraging companies and charities to compare offerings to help them keep mailing costs down and beat the Royal Mail price hike.

On 7 April 2008 Royal Mail is putting up the cost of first class mail from 34p to 36p and second class by 3p from 24p to 27p. For commercial business users, including charities, Royal Mail will be raising its Mailsort tariff rates: for example, Mailsort 2 is typically going up by a unit cost of 1.5p and Mailsort 3 mailings by 0.8p.

At Christian relief and development agency Tearfund, Clive Mear, Production Director, has resized all the charity’s mailings including the Living gifts voucher scheme and the Fair Trade goods catalogue to keep the price of postage down. A member of the Charity Print Consortium, Mear uses Post-Switch to compare prices for all mailings over 10,000.

Dartford-based printing firm Howard Hunt sends out over 600 million direct mail packs a year for such household brands as British Gas and Vodaphone as well as charities including Oxfam. Lucy Edwards at Howard Hunt says that comparing postal prices on every project is essential: she said: “Our clients trust us to keep the cost of their jobs down and often look to us for help in stretching the budget, so switching postal providers when we can to save money makes sense.”

Post-Switch recommends that direct mail managers should have a postal health check every quarter to ensure they are receiving the most competitive rates.

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Post Office compensation claim could cost millions

Posted by | Feb 6, 2008 | |

Royal Mail could be forced to pay several million pounds in compensation amid accusations that it flouted employment law in its restructuring of the Post Office network.

The organisation’s Post Office division is being taken to an employment tribunal by the Communication Workers Union (CWU), on behalf of 1,300 employees who worked for Crown Post Offices that were franchised to WHSmith and other organisations.

The CWU says that the workers were told that they could take redundancy or be redeployed to other Post Offices, but not that they were entitled under law to transfer to the new owners of the offices under the same terms and conditions as they enjoyed at the Post Office. Crown offices are the larger high street branches that are directly managed by Royal Mail, as opposed to the small branches that are run as individual businesses. The union’s claim will be heard at a tribunal in London in May. The CWU is asking for 13 weeks’ payment for the workers, averaging GBP 5,000 each.

The claim for compensation on behalf of the workers, which could total GBP 6.5 million, emerged as MPs on the Commons Business and Enterprise Committee held an inquiry into the closure of up to 2,500 Post Offices. Peter Luff, chair of the committee, asked Alan Cook, the Post Office’s managing director, to provide evidence of the communication to the employees. He said: “We would like further details on this, because I can’t see how this complies with the law.”

The issue flared as the Court of Appeal upheld a GBP 9.62 million fine on Royal Mail imposed by Postcomm for failing to protect mail that went astray. The problem was highlighted in a Channel 4 television investigation.

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Postcomm publishes decision document on Royal Mail zonal pricing application (UK)

Posted by | Feb 5, 2008 | |

Postcomm has today published a decision document giving its reasons for the rejection of Royal Mail’s application to charge large mailers – using products which are not part of the universal service – different prices depending on where in the UK their mail is delivered (Royal Mail calls this zonal pricing).

The reasons for this decision are broadly that Postcomm is not satisfied that the change would be introduced in a manner which avoids unreasonable changes to users, and because it involves discrimination.

In order to provide clarity to users of postal services, Postcomm announced in December 2007 that it would reject this application from Royal Mail.

This decision does not mean that Postcomm is ruling out any future moves towards retail zonal pricing for products outside the universal service should Royal Mail propose an alternative approach that avoids the problems presented by the current application. Postcomm is generally supportive of pricing that is more reflective of costs.

Royal Mail’s ‘zonal pricing’ application did not include services paid for by stamps or those bulk mail products that are included within the definition of the universal service and which must, under the Postal Services Act, remain priced at a uniform rate regardless of delivery zone across the country. It is open to Royal Mail to submit a new application if it can be framed to meet the relevant regulatory tests.

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