POSTWATCH 8th March 2006
By Georgia O'Neill
On Wednesday 8th
March, Mull and Iona Chamber of Commerce invited Henry Johnson of Postwatch
Scotland to come and give a presentation about Postwatch and the future of
our Royal Mail and Post Offices services. The event was attended not just
by Chamber members, but also by sub postmasters/mistresses past and present,
mail order businesses and individuals who rely on their Post Office.
Postwatch was established in 2000 by the government as a watchdog organisation for postal services. It is independent of the Royal Mail and the Post Office. There are nine Postwatch regions. Scotland as a whole is one region. Postwatch exists to encourage and help people to complain about poor service. It must take particular account of the needs of the disabled, chronically sick, those on a low income, the elderly and those in rural areas.
Mr Johnson began his talk by saying that people in Scotland just don’t complain enough. I commented that people don’t complain when they are receiving a good service, for it is a pretty good service that can deliver a letter from one end of the country to another for just 22p. He countered this by saying that it was imperative that the changes that are on their way are well publicised so that we are able to complain now about what we may be about to lose, rather than moaning later about what we used to have (my words, not his).
FUTURE OF POST OFFICES
The local Post Office is something we take very much for granted. It is a permanent fixture so well established in our society that one could easily mistake it to be a right rather than a privilege. Hearing about the number of Post Offices that have been closed in recent years highlighted just how unusual our situation here on Mull is compared to the mainland. One would expect little gems such as Lochbuie, Lochdon and Ulva Ferry Post Offices to be an endangered species – but it appears that the concept of a permanent Post Office (of any shape or size) on the whole of Mull is by no means a certainty.
The Post Office is slowly being destroyed, partly by our own complacency, partly by new technology, mainly by cost cutting government initiatives. The old adage ‘Use it or lose it’ is still relevant and could make a difference when it comes to saving our Post Offices but there is a far greater threat – the removal of government subsidy.
The subsidy, known as the social network payment, was introduced by the government in December 2002 and supports the Rural Post Office Network to the tune of £150 million per year in order to prevent avoidable closures. This subsidy ends in 2008 and without it thousands of Post Offices will be unsustainable. The government will not say at this time whether the subsidy will continue, be reduced, or stopped altogether after 2008. This is infuriating for sub postmasters who need to know the future of their livelihoods.
What Postwatch predicts for communities like Mull is a move towards schemes involving part time or travelling Post Offices and predict (this is not fact) that the only permanent, full time Post Offices in the West Highlands will be found only in Oban and Fort William. The only legal requirement as regards the needs of the consumer is that Post Offices services (not necessarily a permanent Post Office) should be available within 10km for 97% of the population.
Mr Johnson then went on to describe some of the pilot schemes that have been tried in rural areas to replace permanent sub Post Offices. In Caithness five Post Offices closed and were replaced by a van. The scheme was a disaster due to very poor planning. For instance, only one person was appointed to fix the van should it break down and he was based many miles away from the van’s route. Whenever the van broke down it took days to get it fixed – imagine if that was your Post Office and you had an urgent parcel to send, a bill to pay or money to collect. Another oversight was that no shelters were provided at the van’s designated stops. If the van was late (or didn’t turn up at all because it had broken down) there was no shelter for the queue of customers. Other pilot schemes involved ‘Hub & Spoke’ services where a postmaster travels to each village to run a part time service from an existing shop or Village Hall.
Postwatch were keen to know about postal services on an island in order to pinpoint any extra dimension or special factors that are unique to an island service that haven’t yet been identified. Postwatch would have liked to have piloted a scheme on an island so that any difference could be highlighted before any changes take place. Personally, I wouldn’t have wanted our services to be used as a guinea pig if it meant being replaced by anything as farcical as the Caithness experiment.
I don’t know if increasing our use of our Post Offices will make any difference in the end. It seems inevitable that there will be many closures. But we can at least try to preserve as many sub Post Offices as possible on Mull as we can, simply by using them to their full potential.
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Banking |
Some banks allow you to pay into your account at the Post Office. The Clydesdale Bank might have got rid of their van – but you can use the Post Office for Clydesdale accounts instead. |
Many of these services are available cheaper elsewhere. But the cost to yourself, and the environment, is increased if we all have to start driving extra miles to a Post Office.
ROYAL MAIL - THE NEW PRICING REGIME
‘Pricing in Proportion’ is said to be the most radical change to the Royal Mail since the introduction of the Penny Black in 1840.
Since that time, Britain has always priced mail by weight alone. From August this year your mail will be priced according to weight, size and thickness. We will be issued with templates that will help us to calculate the cost of a letter (Postwatch have commented to the Royal Mail that almost every household in Britain was easily capable of calculating the cost of postage with a pair of kitchen scales). Postwatch concedes that there will be ‘winners and losers’ when the new pricing regime is introduced. There are several considerations to take into account to avoid being one of the losers.
If it is more complicated to calculate the cost of a parcel it is therefore more likely that you will have to visit the Post Office to confirm the price (if you need to give the recipient of the parcel a postage price in advance – eBayers take note!). Firstly, there may no longer be a local Post Office for you to do this easily and quickly. Secondly, this extra travelling could prove expensive when before you could give a pretty accurate approximate price based on weight.
Another implication that will affect businesses, organisations and charities is that the size of envelope used will affect a letter’s postage price. For example, a sheet of A4 sent unfolded in an envelope of the same size will cost more than sending the same sheet of paper folded in half in a smaller envelope. It’s not that difficult to adjust to this sort of rule, but it could prove expensive if an organisation has stocked up on several thousand large envelopes for their future mail shots. If you send out large amounts of letters, reassess your envelopes before placing another stationery order. One positive result from these changes could be a reduction in junk mail.
This is the rule that allows us to send mail to and from an island (or any other remote area of Britain) for the same price as anyone else in the country. It also entitles us all to a postal delivery six days a week (with a few very extreme exceptions).
According to Postwatch, this service is not threatened as it is written into legislation and does not come up for review like, for instance, the rural sub Post Office subsidy. Postwatch states that “competition will re-enforce, not undermine, the provision of a universal postal service.” One interesting piece of information that came out was that out of all the companies now providing postal services, only the Royal Mail is obliged to give the Universal Rate.
Several rivals to the Royal Mail have appeared since the competition was allowed to expand in January this year. Out of the 15 or so businesses to apply for licenses to carry mail, none have actually delivered mail to its final destination. They all leave that to the Royal Mail instead and pay a fee for delivery on ‘the final mile’ (after undercutting Royal Mail in the first place).
The main issue that I wanted to raise at the meeting was the unfair surcharges that are levied on parcels to the islands when shopping online or by mail order. To get a real idea about what these charges were like, rather than just quoting personal experience, I chose a random selection of online shops and listed their island delivery prices. The results were a real shock, I had no idea the situation was as bad as it is.
Out of 23 online shops, only five offered delivery to Mull at the same rate as the mainland. Four out of these five used the Royal Mail and their prices tended to be cheaper on the whole than the other companies could offer even for mainland delivery only.
Out of the remaining 18 shops, three levied a surcharge for delivery to Mull of over £35. One of the companies charged £13 to deliver here but only £8.50 to the Channel Islands and £12 to France. The mean average surcharge of this selection of online businesses was £12.42. Click here for all the results.
The advice given by Postwatch is firstly to ask the company you are placing an order with to use the Royal Mail standard parcel service (for parcels up to 20kg - not Parcelforce which is expensive). They will probably say they can’t do this because they exclusively use a particular carrier, or it would mean an employee would have to venture out to a Post Office. But it is worth asking, especially if it’s a small company which can be more flexible. I once asked a company how much the item weighed and then contacted them again with the approximate price for Royal Mail delivery. Unless it’s something you really need, write to the company and say that you will not place your order with them because of the postage costs (again, let them know how much cheaper it would be if they’d send it by post). These costs will continue if we just accept them or don’t bother complaining about them. Does a company that adds a surcharge of £38 really want any custom from the Scottish Islands? It’s probably easier to find a company that does want your business rather than trying to persuade some that they’re overcharging.
Details of the new ‘Pricing in Proportion’ tariff are available on the Chamber’s website www.mullchamber.org/post along with other Postwatch advice about stopping unsolicited (junk) mail. I’d also like to hear your experiences of the best and worst mail order delivery prices as it might be beneficial to have a list of such examples on the website.
One final note, one of those present at the Postwatch meeting expressed the need for services like the post to be valued in social rather than economic terms. Indeed, the social consequences of closing Post Offices should be considered, as it will certainly have far reaching economic implications for communities in the future.
This survey (from the BBC website) illustrates the social value of the Post Office
Post office survey
59% say it's "essential to their way of life"
75% say it's "extremely important" to them
91% say it "plays an important role in their community"
Photo: Chamber President, Sandy Brunton (centre) with Chamber members and other Post Office users. Henry Johnson, Postwatch Scotland (centre left)
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