Tag: Royal Mail

Royal Mail staff awaits pension details

Posted by | Oct 23, 2007 | |

Royal Mail says the Communication Workers Union (CWU) has agreed to the closure of its final salary scheme.

But the union says it has only agreed to a consultation on changes, which will then be put to a ballot of all its Royal Mail and Post Office members.

“The final details have not been decided on,” said a CWU spokeswoman.

Since the start of the year, Royal Mail has wanted to cut the cost of its huge final-salary pension scheme, which covers 160,000 staff but has a deficit of GBP 6.5 bn.

Along with changes to working practices, the closure of the existing final-salary scheme and its replacement with cheaper alternatives was at the heart of the postal service’s recent industrial dispute.

Settlement

Settled on last Monday 22nd after days of negotiations, the dispute saw tens of thousands of postal staff on strike at sorting offices and depots around the country.

There will be a ballot right across all CWU members in the Royal Mail group

CWU spokeswoman

Among the issues agreed, said the Royal Mail, were: “The union’s support for the company’s overall proposed pension reform.”

“Royal Mail’s proposals include closing the final salary scheme to new members from 31 January 2008 and replacing it with a Defined Contribution scheme [and] introducing a Career Average Defined Benefit scheme for our existing employees from 1 April 2008,” it added.

However, a spokeswoman for the CWU said the union was annoyed its stance had been misrepresented.

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Postcomm publishes revised proposals on Royal Mail's redirections service

Posted by | Oct 23, 2007 | |

Postcomm, the independent regulator for postal services, has published its proposals on Royal Mail’s redirections service.

In the fully competitive market, where rivals of Royal Mail are also able to offer their own collection and delivery services, redirection arrangements need to be broadened to allow those rivals to redirect mail. Postcomm has consulted on how this could be achieved within the constraints of data protection rules.

Some of the recommendations Postcomm is making are:

– Royal Mail be required to share the redirections data with other licensed operators who wish to provide a redirections service;
– Once an operator chooses to access redirections data, it must provide a redirections service for its area of operations;
– Royal Mail share the data with other licensed operators from its business diversion service (which Postcomm considers is essentially a subset of the redirections service);
– Other operators wishing to provide a redirections service should be allowed to update their senders with the new address of their customers where the appropriate consent has been given; and
– All licensed operators will be able to not redirect mail if they have explicit instructions to that effect from the sender.

Every year, around 1.3 million households and businesses use Royal Mail’s redirections service, and there are approximately 800,000 redirections “live” on the company’s books at any one time.

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Consultations start in Scotland on changes to Post Office network

Posted by | Oct 23, 2007 | |

Post Office Ltd today opened the first local public consultations in Scotland on changes to the Post Office network needed to meet UK Government requirements. Proposals for the future provision of Post Office services in Greater Glasgow, Central Scotland and Argyll & Bute have been published today and will remain open for consultation for six weeks until 3 December 2007.

Under the Area Plan Proposals published today, 99.9 pct of the population will either see no change to their nearest branch, or will remain within one mile (by road distance) of an alternative branch.

Post Office Ltd is seeking views on the proposed future service provision in Greater Glasgow, Central Scotland and Argyll & Bute, including, in particular, views on access to Post Office services, the accessibility of alternative branches to those proposed for closure and the appropriate form of rural outreach service to be provided.

In addition to the 264 Post Office branches which are proposed to remain open in Greater Glasgow, Central Scotland and Argyll & Bute, three branches in rural Stirlingshire will be replaced with a form of outreach services. The plan also proposes a reduction of 44 branches from the present number of 308.

The plan includes proposed outreach services in three communities in rural Stirlingshire – Buchlyvie, Thornhill and Gargunnock.

Possible types of outreach service could include a mobile service visiting small communities at set times, a hosted service operated within third party premises for restricted hours each week, or a partner service within the premises of a local partner (such as a shop).

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Post Office (UK) earmarks 44 closures

Posted by | Oct 23, 2007 | |

The Post Office wants to reduce the number of branches in Argyll and Bute by seven, Greater Glasgow by 27 and Central Scotland by 10.

There will be a six-week consultation period to give communities a chance to air their views on the closures.

Plans for post office provision for other parts of Scotland will be announced next year.

The closure list for the Highlands is expected in January, the list for the Western and Northern Isles in March, and for the north-east, Tayside and Fife in April. Other areas will be announced in June and July next year.

The consultation on the future of the first earmarked post offices will remain open for six weeks until 3 December.

The plans are part of a wider restructuring of post office services throughout the UK.

Post office workers told the BBC Scotland news website that they were being prevented from talking to the media about the closures.

Some also revealed that they had yet to receive any official notification of the proposals and only learned their jobs might be under threat when leaflets about the closures were delivered to branches at the weekend.

The first closures are expected to take place in February 2008 with all changes expected to be completed by the end of that year.

There are 308 post office branches in Greater Glasgow, Central Scotland and Argyll & Bute.

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Three new Posts sign up as members of Triangle’s Global Post Office Retail Benchmarking Group

Posted by | Oct 23, 2007 | |

Triangle are pleased to announce and welcome three new Post Office networks as members of the Post Office Retail Benchmarking Group. Poste Italiane, HayPost and Saudi Post have all recently joined and will be attending the next Benchmarking meeting to be held at PosTech in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on the 13th November 2007.

Alberto Buttaroni, Head of Operations and Customer Care at Poste Italiane commented: “To join the Global Post Office Retail Benchmarking Group is a way to step into wider relations with foreign Postal Operators, with a particular focus on product development. We are pleased to create a link between different postal organizations because we believe this can be an opportunity to find out more about different countries and improve our know-how. In this way we believe we can learn more about each others companies by comparing particular solutions to the same issue.”

The main objectives for the group is to create a cooperative environment to share information to develop “best in class”, compare KPI’s against each other, conduct best practice studies of important business processes and be kept updated on global developments within the Post Office industry.

The group now has 10 Post Office networks as members and include An Post, Emirates Post, Egypt Post, Jersey Post, HayPost, Lebanon Post, Poste Italiane, UK Post Office, Saudi Post and South African Post Office.

If you are interested in joining the group and would like to be considered for membership, please email Triangle’s Benchmarking Coordinator Marcin at [email protected].

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