Minister says he will work with business to investigate, while China dismisses suggestion of state role as ‘absurd’
The Post Office minister, Kevin Hollinrake, has called on Royal Mail to investigate allegations that factories in China are mass-producing fake British stamps for export.
Use of a counterfeit stamp can result in a £5 fine but realistic fakes are being sold online and bought unwittingly by the public and smaller retailers.
Continue reading...Emma Gilthorpe is tasked with turning company around and takes up newly created CEO role in May
Royal Mail has appointed a senior executive from Heathrow to become its next boss, charged with delivering a turnaround to the ailing postal company.
Emma Gilthorpe, who has been the chief operating officer at the airport since 2020, will join Royal Mail in May.
Continue reading...Regulator’s review will look at evidence and options on how universal postal service ‘might need to evolve’
Royal Mail could be allowed to end Saturday postal deliveries as part of Ofcom’s review into how the service may need to be reformed.
Next week, Ofcom will publish a document outlining “potential options for the future of the universal postal service”.
Continue reading...Customers can collect their parcels and try on items in one trip during trial at La Poste branches
It is an increasingly common irritant of modern life. You order an item of clothing online; you wait with anticipation for it to arrive, and five minutes after it has arrived you’re packaging it up because it doesn’t fit.
For shoppers in France, however, the national post office may have the answer – or at least a way of making the process less logistically challenging. It is experimenting with in-store changing rooms to cater to people who want to quickly return purchases they do not want.
Continue reading...CWU union lines up action as MP brands bosses’ threat to put service into administration as ‘scandalous’
Postal workers at Royal Mail are poised to stage a fresh wave of strikes after Easter as talks stalled, amid a “scandalous” threat by bosses to put the company into administration.
The Communication Workers Union (CWU), which represents about 115,000 postal workers, is close to agreeing multiple strike dates to take place later in April, the Guardian understands, in the long-running dispute between the company and union. A formal announcement of the strike dates is expected this week.
Continue reading...Rico Back believes postal service’s talks with union have been poorly handled
The former Royal Mail boss Rico Back has launched a withering attack on the company’s board, saying its chief executive lacked experience and had mishandled talks with the Communication Workers Union that led to strikes and chaos in the run-up to Christmas.
Royal Mail has been locked for months in an increasingly bitter battle with the CWU over pay and changes to working conditions. Simon Thompson joined as chief executive two years ago from the online grocer Ocado.
Continue reading...Passengers arriving in UK can expect longer queues while mail may not arrive in time for Christmas
Border Force officials will on Friday join the wave of industrial action across Britain, starting the first of a series of strikes at airports, while Royal Mail workers walk out again for two days before Christmas.
Passengers travelling into the UK have been warned to be prepared for longer queues at immigration in airports, while many letters and parcels will now go undelivered before Christmas, as staff take action over pay trailing behind inflation.
Continue reading...Royal College of Nursing announces unprecedented action, likely to to be first in a series of strikes by NHS staff over winter
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has announced its members will stage national strikes – the first in its 106-year history – on 15 and 20 December, with action expected to last for 12 hours on both days.
The unprecedented industrial action will seriously disrupt care and is likely to be the first in a series of strikes over the winter and into the spring by NHS staff, including junior doctors and ambulance workers.
Continue reading...Author Alan Cleaver collecting stories of rural postal workers who walked miles each week, and the routes they took
The last surviving rural postal workers who delivered mail by foot are being sought for a forthcoming book celebrating their lives and mapping their often arduous daily journeys.
Delivering mail by foot ended in the countryside in 1970 with the adoption of postal vans, and it is now feared that the postal paths and the history of those who trod them are disappearing from living memory.
Continue reading...The new ‘postal drone routes’ will improve the reliability of mail services to remote communities, the company said
Royal Mail has announced plans to increase its use of drones for deliveries with the creation of 50 new “postal drone routes” over the next three years.
Under a partnership with logistics drone company Windracers, and subject to Civil Aviation Authority approval, the move will provide faster and more convenient services for remote communities, Royal Mail said.
Continue reading...Living in a small town can have its advantages when it comes to the rising problem of identity fraud
Knowing everybody by name is a matter of course in small country towns, and at a time when rural residents are more prone than city dwellers to scams it is proving useful in preventing identity fraud.
Last month, in the western New South Wales town of Gilgandra – population 4,200 – local post office licensee Stuart Border “smelled a rat”.
Continue reading...Postal wonder | Corruption | Sacklers | Platinum pudding | Polar prayers
As a five-year-old in the 1950s, I wrote a letter with my Toytown writing set to my favourite uncle, who was in the navy. Before posting, I chose the shade of Noddy stamp to best complement the matching paper and envelope, then addressed it to “Uncle Bob, Malta” (Letters, 11 January). He received it, along with a hefty excess postage fee, but carried it with him in his wallet long afterwards as a cherished memory of home.
Andrea Clarkson
Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria
• You report that “the British foreign secretary, Liz Truss, insists the UK has some of the toughest anti-corruption laws in the world” (MPs to re-examine UK response to dirty money from Russia, 10 January). But laws and acts of parliament are just pieces of paper until their implementation is monitored.
Marika Sherwood
Oare, Kent
Antrim musician Feargal Lynn offers Royal Mail ‘hearty applause’ for successfully delivering letter to him
Sherlock Holmes might have balked, but the Royal Mail detectives came up trumps when they correctly delivered a letter with an address that was more like an episode of This Is Your Life than a conventional street name and postcode.
Writing on Twitter, the County Antrim musician Feargal Lynn said the postal system deserved “hearty applause” for successfully delivering the letter addressed by following a brief history of his family in the area.
Continue reading...Based in Port Lockroy, Antarctica, it’s the post office at the bottom of the world. Now Ranulph Fiennes is calling for action to ensure it survives
Name: Penguin post office.
Age: Built in 1944.
Continue reading...Parcel boxes to be introduced across the country, with aim to help small businesses
The Royal Mail is launching the UK’s first parcel postboxes across the country.
The move follows a successful trial and is the first major change in the use of postboxes in 160 years.
Continue reading...