Tag: UK

2,500 UK Post Offices will close

Posted by | May 17, 2007 | |

As expected Alistair Darling has confirmed there will be 2,500 compensated post office closures over the next 18 months. This will leave a post office network by spring 2009 of about 11,800 post offices.

Millie Banerjee, Chair of the watchdog for postal services, Postwatch, gave the following reaction to the news:

“This will not be a popular decision. But there is a broad consensus amongst those who have been considering the future of post offices that quite severe pruning is necessary if the remaining network is to be sustainable.

“Fewer customer visits and losses of over GBP 200 million a year meant action was needed. It is welcome that the government has confirmed today that financial support in excess of GBP 1.5 billion will be available up to 2011.

“We wanted the government to take a decision and to provide the missing strategic guidance. It is now down to Post Office Limited to work with Postwatch, MPs, local authorities and customers to implement the decision and to maintain as far as possible customer access to post offices services. We welcome the introduction of 500 alternative post offices in place of their bricks and mortar counterparts. These alternative mobile, part-time or co-located solutions provide local access at far less cost.

“Customers will be concerned to know if their local office is under threat. At this early stage no-one knows which offices will be proposed for closure. An announcement will be made once the closure consultation plan and timetable are finalised.

“I am sure customers will recognise that it is better for closures to be planned rather than unplanned: Unplanned closures could have led to some areas having no access at all to post office services.

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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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