Category Archives: Postal service

Royal Mail goes ahead with cuts to UK flights despite takeover

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Three more freight flights to go this month as parent company’s CEO Martin Seidenberg pursues transformation

The boss of Royal Mail’s parent company has said it will push on with a transformation of the group despite its £3.57bn takeover, as Royal Mail prepares this month to cut more daily freight flights.

Martin Seidenberg, the chief executive of International Distribution Services, plans “the biggest network change in 20 years” to revamp Royal Mail’s deliveries despite uncertainty created by the Czech energy tycoon Daniel Kretinsky’s takeover, which has been backed by the board.

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Royal Mail owner warns Czech billionaire’s offer could create risk around finances

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IDS says a change in ownership may lead to ‘material uncertainty’ over the company’s future

Royal Mail’s owner has warned that a potential £3.5bn bid by the Czech billionaire Daniel Křetínský could create risk around the company’s finances.

The warning came as the industry regulator Ofcom announced that it had opened an investigation into the parent group, International Distributions Services (IDS), for failing to meet its annual delivery targets for the second year in a row. Last year, Ofcom fined the company £5.6m for failing to meet its first-class and second-class delivery targets in 2022-23.

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Royal Mail urged to investigate claims of Chinese-made fake stamps

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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.

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Royal Mail names senior Heathrow executive as next boss

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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.

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Ofcom to set out possible Royal Mail reforms – and Saturday deliveries could end

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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”.

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French post office opens changing room for online shoppers

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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.

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Royal Mail workers poised for strikes after Easter as talks fail

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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.

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Ex-Royal Mail boss hits out at board for ‘confrontational path’ on strikes

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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.

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Border Force staff join strikes as postal workers walk out again

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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.

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Nurses to strike for two days as December disruption deepens

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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.

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Posties’ paths: Britons who delivered mail by foot sought for new book

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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.

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Special delivery: Royal Mail to expand drone drops with 50 new routes

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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.

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Identity scam scuppered when country postie ‘smelled a rat’

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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”.

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A treasured letter to Uncle Bob in Malta | Brief letters

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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

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‘Lives across from the Spar’: bizarrely labelled letter finds way to UK address

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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.

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