Tag: Royal Mail

GBP 1.7bn investment to keep Post Office network national

Posted by | May 16, 2007 | |

Investment, stronger protections for local communities and more outreach services are at the centre of the Government’s GBP 1.7 billion proposals to maintain a national Post Office network and put it on a sustainable footing for the e-mail age.

Responding to the wide consultation undertaken since the December 2006 statement, Trade and Industry Secretary Alistair Darling has announced the Government has strengthened further the protections for customers in rural and remote areas and widened the areas that will qualify for special protections for deprived urban communities.

With widespread acceptance that the current size of the network is unsustainable and losses rising to GBP 4 million every week, despite an annual subsidy of GBP 150 million and total investment of GBP 2 billion since 1999, it will be for Post Office Ltd to draw up local area plans within the national framework. That will be done with input from local authorities, MPs, the consumer protection body Postwatch and subpostmasters, for consultation with local people.

Postwatch will also monitor future decisions on the shape and size of the network to ensure Post Office Ltd continues to comply with the national framework.

In the longer term, the Government is working on proposals to devolve greater responsibility for future decisions on post offices to a local level, and will investigate what role local authorities and the devolved administrations could play in decisions on future services and funding.

The strategy announced today does not include decisions on individual post offices. These will be taken by Post Office Ltd after their local area consultations.

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Remote post offices could avoid the axe

Posted by | May 16, 2007 | |

Post offices in some of the most remote parts of Britain could be spared from closing in a late rethink by ministers.

But the move, understood to help areas of Scotland in particular, will lead to suspicions that Labour is trying to revive its battered fortunes in Gordon Brown’s homeland.

Alistair Darling, the Trade and Industry Secretary, will confirm tomorrow that about 2,500 post offices will have to shut over the next 18 months.

Mr Darling is expected to tell MPs that, with many branches struggling to attract any business, the current UK-wide network of more than 14,000 post offices must be slimmed down to about 12,000.

He is poised to confirm the scale of the closure programme, first outlined last December, despite presiding over a consultation process that produced more than 2,500 responses.

Mr Darling will attempt to soften the blow by confirming a compensation package likely to be worth on average pounds 60,000 for each branch that has to shut.

He will also confirm that as part of a pounds 1.7 billion investment between now and 2011, there will also be an annual subsidy of pounds 150 million to help the remaining post offices most at risk.

Even after tomorrow’s announcement, people in particular parts of the country will have to wait up to 18 months to find out if their branch is doomed under lengthy local consultation processes to be overseen by Post Office Ltd.

But last night, Government sources hinted that in one concession, Mr Darling, who also represents a Scottish constituency, would issue amended guidance to protect branches from closure in more inaccessible parts of the UK.

A well-placed source suggested last night that the Highlands of Scotland in particular would probably benefit from the change.

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Post Office still needs to deliver improved services;Analysis

Posted by | May 14, 2007 | |

The Post Office is said to be the best known brand in the UK after Coca-Cola. It is also the country’s biggest retail chain. But it is also an organisation that loses a million items of its customers’ business per week; delivers a service at midday – when most recipients have gone to work; does not take credit cards; offers bureaux de change without computer access to exchange rates; and one that many people only visit because they have to.

The Post Office has, by any measure, much to do to catch up with the rest of the world.

And there is little time in which to do it. Postcomm, the regulator, has insisted that competition should dawn, despite the efforts of the Post Office and the Government to resist the substantial reduction of the monopoly that is sought by the European Union.

Postcomm made clear this week that a cut of the monopoly is not the only route to competition. Rival businesses will soon be able to win licences for parts of the Post Office business. The power to grant those licences begins in March when the Post Office becomes a plc, albeit one entirely owned by the Government, and the postal consumers’ group gains greater powers.

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Hundreds of post offices to shut in Scotland

Posted by | May 14, 2007 | |

Hundreds of post offices across Scotland are set to be closed as part of government plans to be announced this week.

AlistairDarling, the Trade and Industry Secretary, will reveal the response to a consultation on closures which campaigners believe will spell the end for as many as 800 branches in Scotland. Pensioners’ groups and rural communities have been outraged by the programme they fearwill cut off many people from vital services.

However, the government insists the network is losing millions of pounds every week and is impossible to sustain. Around 2500 post offices are understood to be closing out of a total of 14,000 in the UK but with a high proportion in Scotland. Between one-quarter and one-third of all closures are believed to be north of the border.

Figures from consumer group Postwatch show the number of post offices in Britain has fallen from 18,393 in 1999 to 14,376 in 2005.

Last June there were 1676 post offices in Scotland – 1117 in rural areas and 559 in urban areas.

Mr Darling has said many remote post offices which do not meet the criteria will be allowed to remain open but hundreds are still expected to close.

New criteria over how far away people should be expected to live from their nearest post office will change and the closures are expected by hit urban as well as rural areas.

Under the new rules, 95per cent of the urban population will be within one mile of a post office and in rural areas 95per cent should be within three miles and in remote areas 95per cent within six miles.

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Lifeline for post offices threatened with closure

Posted by | May 13, 2007 | |

When the elderly postmistress in the Kent village of Sutton Valence decided to sell up in 1986, Gary Coyle was probably not on her list of target buyers.

Having left a tough comprehensive school in Northampton at the age of 15 without any qualifications, he became a chef and began an extraordinary journey. It took him from the Queen Eleanor hotel in Northampton to a head chef at the Mark Warner company, cooking at the exclusive ski resorts of Verbier and Meribel.

But after catering, he became attracted to the mail business when the village post office went up for sale near to the home of his in-laws. That was more than 20 years ago. He has never looked back, but many other postmasters have not found the going so easy.

As the only shop in the village, his business is thriving, but other rural post offices are not so lucky. About 2,500 are under threat of closure and Coyle is now leading a mission to save them.

He is aware that it will not be an easy task. The 14,200-strong post-office network loses about Pounds 4m a week and is propped up only by government subsidy.

Post offices that make money tend to be the larger ones in busy urban areas.

Coyle has tried a post-office initiative before, and failed – the Postmasternetwork that aimed to boost the average income of a sub-postmaster by Pounds 5,000 a year by finding new revenue streams. When he pulled the plug on the operation in January, he cleared all its debts, but lost Pounds 100,000 of his own cash in the process. That venture was backed by high-profile City figures, who prefer not to divulge their identities.

Coyle remains undeterred. He has now teamed up with Mail Boxes Etc, part of United Parcel Service (UPS), the international courier-services giant, in a plan to set up new post-office franchises under the Mail Boxes name.

Mail Boxes already has 105 post offices in the UK and Ireland but is desperate to expand. Coyle is leading the initiative on their behalf and being paid a retainer.

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