For many decades, I have had a deep interest in the future of the Post Office network. For 24 years, I worked for trade unions with members employed by what is now called Post Office Limited (POL) and for six years I sat on the Boards of the consumer bodies on postal matters (Postwatch and Consumer Focus). I still chair the Post Offices Advisory Group<\/a> at what is now called Consumer Futures.<\/p>\n

“The future of the Post Office has not been part of the discussion about Royal Mail privatisation. But with a third of Post Office income dependent on Royal Mail, the fate of both organisations is intimately linked<\/p>\n
\u2022 This report models nine scenarios for the future of the Post Office network. In only one of the nine scenarios does the network have any- thing resembling a secure future<\/p>\n
\u2022 Furthermore, this scenario is based on a number of uncertain factors including the Post Office achieving rapid growth in the level of income received from financial services and winning significant new business for providing government services. A strong, successful relationship between the Post Office and Royal Mail is also key to this scenario<\/p>\n
\u2022 In such a climate of uncertainty, the government has been reckless to relinquish a controlling stake in Royal Mail<\/p>\n
\u2022 We therefore recommend that the government retains the maximum amount of shares in Royal Mail. This would provide future governments an opportunity to buy back enough shares to regain a controlling stake<\/p>\n
\u2022 The privatisation of Royal Mail now makes a consideration of the long-term future of both the Post Office network and Royal Mail an urgent priority<\/p>\n
\u2022 The government should therefore prioritise plans to use the Post Office to provide a greater number of services. Responsibility for overseeing this process could be given to the Cabinet Office to ensure greater buy-in across Whitehall “<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
You can read the full text here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For many decades, I have had a deep interest in the future of the Post Office network. For 24 years, I worked for trade unions with members employed by what is now called Post Office Limited (POL) and for six years I sat on the Boards of the consumer bodies on postal matters (Postwatch and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-british-current-affairs","category-my-life-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12837"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12837\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12851,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12837\/revisions\/12851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}