One of the most interesting statements in Monday’s Panorama programme on Royal Mail deliveries came from Michael Fehilly, the manager of Gatwick Mail Centre. The reporter, Vivian White, was talking about “the competition … But it’s an odd form of competition … TNT and the others bring their trucks to Gatwick, and the Royal Mail does the final sorting and delivering of its rivals’ mail.”
Michael Fehilly said: “We don’t have a choice. We are in a regulated business. We have to offer that service.”
What’s so odd about this is that one of the common terms used to describe the system by which TNT and the other private mail companies are given access to the Royal Mail’s network is “deregulation”. Royal Mail is regulated in order to deregulate the postal service, it seems.
This is just one of the many contradictions at the heart of the debate about the future of the postal service in the UK.
One of the failures of the programme, in my view, was the fact that it didn’t look into the regulatory framework. There was no mention of Postcomm, no investigation of its members, and no looking behind the scenes to see what part the government might be playing in all of this.
However, the reaction at work yesterday was very positive. People were laughing out loud about the fact that the former Royal Marine and military fitness expert Tony Goddard was unable to finish postie Martin Heward’s round in the allotted time, and that he said that it was “unreasonable” to expect posties to do it five days a week.
It just goes to show what great pressure we are under. Tony Goddard is 32. Martin Heward is 44. I’m 56. How do you think I manage?
Much scorn was also poured on Paul Tolhurst, operations director of Royal Mail, when he said: “The reality is, what they are delivering is probably four or five more packages, and 50 less letters.”
“The reality is 10 or 20 more packages, and 100 more letters,” someone said, to great amusement.
What Paul Tolhurst forgot to mention was the fact – brought out in the programme – that 60,000 jobs have been cut in the last seven years. That’s 60,000 fewer employees carrying increasing volumes of mail, as even the programme’s compliant postie agreed. Francis Head, who works in Burgess Hill in Sussex, said, “It’s going up steadily. Twenty years ago I used to work at Haywards Heath office, and the difference in the mail is quite phenomenal.”
One of the reasons for this is the amount of our rivals’ mail we are having to carry over what is called, euphemistically, “the final mile”, a term that was used in the programme.
Pardon?
It’s a lot more than a mile. TNT only delivers as far as the main sorting offices, like the one in Gatwick, which is 150 miles from my round at least. Even my round is a lot more than a mile long. So Royal Mail – and poor fools like me – are doing considerably more than just “the final mile”. We are doing the work. TNT is taking the profit.
Source: Read Full Article