Tag: UK

Millions of pensioners could have their welfare benefits withdrawn because of a hidden means test in the Government’s flagship proposal for the new Post Office Card Account. The Tories warned last night that a loophole in the system for ending the traditional weekly cash payment could leave the elderly financially vulnerable. The Government is switching to electronic payments over the next two years and has set up the account as an option for the estimated 3.5 million benefit recipients who do not have access to banking services.

Allan Leighton’s restructuring of Royal Mail has seen the postal group spend Pounds 564 million in redundancy and early retirement payments to date – just halfway through the process.

The payouts have been made as part of a generous redundancy programme, in which managers in the loss-making organisation are being offered sums of between six months’ and a year’s salary, in addition to a lump sum for taking voluntary redundancy or early retirement.

Royal Mail has said that it needs to cut 30,000 jobs from its 220,000 payroll in three years or face bankruptcy.

Allan Leighton, non-executive chairman of Royal Mail, received a performance-related bonus of pounds 165,000 last year, the company’s annual report reveals. The amount stops just shy of the potential pounds 180,000 that Mr Leighton, who is supposed to spend one day a week at the group, could receive.

The salary of directors at Royal Mail rose by 156 per cent last year, taking their total income to Pounds 2.2 million, it emerged yesterday.

Directors’ pay at the postal group, which reported losses of Pounds 197 million in the year just ended, included bonuses worth Pounds 619,848. In the preceding year, boardroom pay totalled Pounds 873,439 after the company reported an operating loss of Pounds 318 million.