Your Post Office is threatened by Royal Mail privatisation
- The Government plans to privatise Royal Mail. Unions say that this will threaten the jobs of 15000 managers and 160,000 workforce. Already 5000 job cuts over last 5 years.
- The 11500 branches of the Post Office could be turned into a cooperative style mutual company.
- “There is no point mutualising the Post Office …if it does not have a viable future and it won’t without a long term agreement with Royal Mail” says George Thompson of The National Federation of Subpostmasters (NFSP). The NFSP wants a 10-year contract that commits a privatised Royal Mail to use the Post Office to provide services and process mail, but the Government wants this limited to 5 years.
- The Post Office is close to losing to Paypoint the 5 year government cotract to to distribute 400000 green giro welfare payments a week.
- The Labour Government’s annual subsidy to the Post Office was £150m with an additional £300m available between 2006 -2008 to pay for the rural Post Office network. The Post Office subsidy will be increased from next April by 30m a year for four years, but nothing to support rural post offices.
- DCC is supporting 16 village Post offices with £4000 each over next two years, including Kennerleigh and Newyon St Cyres. But what happens when the money runs out?
- Rural branches would be more viable if it were possible to open a basic bank account in a post office, research suggests, as well as increasing services.
