Tag: Royal Mail

Almost 100 jobs are to go at a Royal Mail customer services centre in Essex.
The company has announced the office in Colchester will close with the loss of 97 jobs as part of plans to merge the service into six national centres.

A Royal Mail spokesman said voluntary redundancy or alternative roles in a different department would be offered to those whose jobs would be going.

The spokesman said services to customers would not be affected by the changes, due to be completed by March.

The move follows the end of Royal Mail’s monopoly of the postal industry, earlier this year, forcing it to deal with competitors.

The Government hinted yesterday that Britain’s post offices should be allowed to take on competitors’ business to help put the network on a sure financial footing. Ministers will soon set the level of the annual pounds 150 million subsidy for the post office network after 2008. If it is cut heavily, thousands of post offices will have to close.

Mr Fitzpatrick said part of the solution was for the post offices, which are losing between pounds 2 million and pounds 4 million a week, to be allowed to look for new business. Under the current arrangement sub-post offices, which are private businesses, can only handle post for Royal Mail under an exclusive contract, rather than for other carriers such as DHL.

They are also not allowed to have alternative payment terminals in their shops, such as Pay Point terminals, which are now needed to sell TV licences.

Mr Fitzpatrick suggested that this sort of deal was likely to have to change. “We are doing all we can to help Post Office Limited provide new financial products.

“They are the biggest supplier of personal insurance, the biggest supplier of foreign currency, they have recently launched products like a new saver account and they are migrating people from post office card to other bank accounts.”

The National Federation of Subpostmasters has asked for a range of financial products including a student account, for them to sell.