Post Office closures

The Post Office has announced job losses and closures as part of a business review. It claims these are needed to stem losses. The Communication Workers Union (CWU) disagrees. It says that management of the scandal-ridden organisation has learned no lessons from its past mistakes.

During the final week of the Horizon inquiry into wrongful prosecutions of subpostmasters and the events that followed, the interim Post Office chair, Nigel Railton, said that it wants to change its business model. It will close up to 115 directly run branches and reduce its head office workforce by 1,000.

Crisis

CWU members have seen this coming – the crisis is one of the Post Office’s own making. This will cost taxpayers a lot of money– compensation for the victims of Horizon, increased payments to subpostmasters, at least to start with – and Post Office direct employees will lose their jobs.

‘PO management are “tone deaf and immoral”’

Dave Ward, CWU general secretary called on the Post Office to halt their plans and talk realistically to the union about protecting jobs ands services. He accused management of being “tone deaf and immoral” in making his members further victims of the Horizon scandal.

CWU, which represents direct PO employees, has been resolute in support of the victimised subpostmasters throughout. It says it will fight the plans if they are not withdrawn.

Shrinking

Post Office Limited is government-owned, but operates a commercial company. The network has been shrinking over the years – with several rounds of cuts to the number of workers it employs. The branches marked for closure are just about all of those remaining directly owned (there were over 600 in 1997). Over 80 per cent of its 11,600 outlets are run by independent subpostmasters or franchised to retail chains.

The balance of just under 2,000 outlets is a mixture of partial services – “outreach” (eg in village halls or mobile offices) and “drop & collect” (no counters, for prepaid services and the like). These have been introduced over the past two decades years as main offices closed and the subpostmaster network halved (from 18,600 in 1997 to 9,400 in 2023).

Catch

On 12 November Railton said that the Post Office plans to double the amount paid to independent postmasters up to £230 million by 2030 – the catch being that this is “subject to government funding”.

Yet the government has promised its own review and pitches the Post Office network as a channel for banking services in areas where there are few alternatives. That’s going to be a problem in towns like Morecambe in Lancashire (see picture) where there will be only one bank branch from next year.

Struggling

The Post Office is struggling to find permanent senior managers in the wake of Horizon. Whether subpostmasters will believe that it will make them the centre of a new business model is an open question, but it would not be surprising if many were doubtful.

And the government’s idea of making the Post Office a mutual enterprise is also flawed according to Alan Bates, one of the leading subpostmasters in their campaign.

Lack of progress

Railton also promised a “lower-risk, better value” IT system for subpostmasters. Computer Weekly, which did so much to uncover the issues with the Horizon banking system, reported last month on the progress towards a replacement – or rather the lack of it.

The overall picture is not encouraging. This is vital national infrastructure – it isn’t working well and now the failed management wants to cut back with the hope that the abused subpostmasters will form the core of a reformed business.