THOUSANDS of mail users have rejected a plan to pay £750 a year to receive their post before 9am. Not one of 23,800 Edinburgh homes and 400 businesses in a Consignia pilot scheme has taken up the offer.
It suggests Consignia’s plans to raise extra cash, while saving £350million by scrapping the second post, could backfire.
The Edinburgh trial is one of 14 in Britain.
Nightspeed Services has won a £100,000 contract from AFE Online to deliver crockery to contract caterers and distributors. The company uses sealed security cages, as well as manual sorting and loading, to minimise damage and loss.
Read MoreExpress Dairies PLC’s milkmen will start delivering post on their milkrounds after the company was granted a postal licence by the Postal Services Commission.
In a statement, the company said the licence is for an initial 12-month period. Express will use its urban delivery network of 106 depots and 3,500 milkrounds to deliver up to 4.6 mln items of bulk mail from business senders to households.
The chairman of troubled postal group Consignia has said the company will continue to make losses of #1.5 million a day for the next three years, it emerged today.
Allan Leighton also said he did not believe the service should be privatised, adding that he was “confident” his business plan would turn the company’s fortunes around.
In an interview for the BBC Radio 4 On The Ropes programme, Mr Leighton told presenter John Humphrys: “We are losing #1.5 million a day. We can’t continue to do that. We will go bust.”
When asked when Consignia was going to stop losing money at that rate, he replied: “Not for probably three years.”
And when quizzed about whether the losses would continue at the rate of #1.5 million a day, the chairman replied: “Yeah. The plan that we have in place gets the mail’s business back to profit, and in terms of cash generation, in three years.
“In the same way that things don’t go wrong overnight, you can’t get things to go right overnight.”
Traders in mid-Somerset are angry at proposals by Consignia to charge businesses £14 per week to guarantee delivery of their mail by 9am.
Spokesmen are particularly concerned about the effect of the charge on small businesses, many of whom are already finding it hard enough to survive without having to absorb extra charges, they say.
Estate agent Andrew Edwards, who is Hon Secretary of Shepton Mallet Chamber of Commerce, said many businesses are not going to be able to afford to pay, but they will still need their early morning delivery.
He believes businesses will increasingly use alternative methods of communication such as faxes and electronic mail, bypassing Consignia completely.
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