Tag: Royal Mail

The first day of this year’s Mail Show brought all the leading mail executives together to debate the future of the domestic mail market. An audience of over 400 senior industry figures heard Postcomm Chairman Nigel Stapleton call for Royal Mail to concentrate on “efficiency gains” rather than hoping for a government handout to alleviate its GBP4bn pensions deficit. Speaking to the Financial Times, he described RM as “a pension fund with a mail business attached rather than the other way round”. Royal Mail’s Adam Crozier responded that it would descend into a “spiral of decline” if forced to cut costs to the level required by Postcomm. Competitiveness Minister Barry Gardiner said that he would wait until price controls were finalised before intervening and that, if the price settlement is correct, RM should be able to meet its obligations. In another session, Triangle presented the results of Monday’s Customer Forum of the UK’s top mail users. Among their conclusions was that there had been little change in the product alternatives available from the operators in 2005, and that Royal Mail is fighting back using weapons such as Pricing in Proportion to muddy the waters.

Proposals for tackling barriers to entry in postal services
Contents: Summary i 1. Introduction 1 1.1 Postcomm’s statutory duties 1 1.2 Postcomm’s vision and regulatory strategy 2 1.3 Purpose and structure of this document 2 1.4 Process so far 3 1.5 How to respond 4 1.6 Confidentiality of responses 5 2. General overview of the UK postal market 6 2.1 Introduction 6 2.2 Overview of the UK postal sector 6 2.3 The size of the UK letter market 7 2.4 Characteristics of mail 8 3. Development of competition in the UK letter market 11 3.2 Market entry to date 12 3.3 Market volumes 2004/05 16 3.4 Market revenues 2004/05 17 3.5 Latest developments 17 3.6 Prospects for entry 20 3.7 International experience 21 3.8 Summary 22 4. Royal Mail’s performance 23 4.1 Introduction 23 4.2 Universal Service 23 4.3 Financial performance 24 4.4 Quality of Service performance 31 4.5 Summary 37 5: Customer awareness and behaviour 38 5.1 2005 business customer survey 38 5.2 Key results of the 2005 survey 39 5.3 Postcomm’s response 44 6. Stakeholder Views 46 6.1 Introduction 46
6.2 Summary 47 7. Barriers to the development of effective competition 48 7.1 Introduction 48 7.2 Barriers to the development of effective competition 48 7.3 Other Key Concerns 64 7.4 Summary 70 Annex 1: Stakeholder views 71 Annex 2: Postcomm’s review of the exclusive relationship between Royal Mail and Post Office Limited 92 Annex 3: Postcomm’s process for complaints of anti-competitive behaviour under Part 4 of Royal Mail’s licence 96 Annex 4: Access determination process 99 Annex 5. Prospects for entry 101
P:LibraryPostalPostComm Formal DocumentsCompetitive_Market_Review_Nov_2005.pdf

Postcomm today published its Competitive Market Review: 2005, which includes the results of a survey of 1,200 postal users. Speaking at the Mail Show in London today, Postcomm chairman Nigel Stapleton said that, since the market was first opened to limited competition nearly 30 months ago, Royal Mail’s rivals had won just over 1.5% of the letters market. “Customers tell us that this is already encouraging Royal Mail to be more responsive to their needs and offer more choice and innovation in postal services,” said Mr Stapleton. “But the development of a fully competitive market is still at a very early stage. By its own calculations, Royal Mail will still have nearly 90% of the market in 2010,” he added.