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The future of Crown Post Offices - Are they really necessary?

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The future of Crown Post Offices - Are they really necessary?

Post by boatbuilder » Thu Aug 11, 2016 9:04 am

Seems like it is widespread.........'we move ore else....'

Plan to move Aberystwyth Crown Post Office causes concern

Concerns have been raised about proposals to move the Post Office in the centre of Aberystwyth to a branch of WHSmith.
Residents fear services could be compromised and that access in the shop will be difficult for disabled people and those with pushchairs.
A public consultation on the plans has been launched and will run until 21 September.
The Post Office said the move was needed to secure the branch's future.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-mid-wales-37037854
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Re: The future of Crown Post Offices - Are they really necessary?

Post by SL-Dave » Mon Aug 22, 2016 3:24 pm

What concerns me about all these post office moves, is the talk of franchising them - it's only mentioned once but that once is probably a slip of the tongue as it were. My suspicion is that the Crown post offices are being phased out in place of franchises such as inside Spar and WHSmiths and One Stop shops. This provides a similar - albeit substandard - service, without the overheads. And of course the regular franchising fees as well as percentage of each monthly profit being fed back into Post Office Limited. As a public body, this means that this is a better way for the government to maximise profits, and reduce costs. Shame that this also means reducing the actual level of service to the customer. I also believe that the Post Office is legally obliged to provide Crown post offices, meaning that this could possibly be illegal.

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Re: The future of Crown Post Offices - Are they really necessary?

Post by boatbuilder » Mon Aug 22, 2016 4:42 pm

I'm not sure why you are so concerned about the Crown P.O's. What service do you use them for that you can't get from any of the other 11,200 (approx) P.O. branches that may be inside stores such as WHS or Co-op? I rarely use the CPO and when I do it is purely the convenience of using it if I happen to be in town. On a day-to-day basis it is more convenient for me to use the one in Westwood Avenue Co-op which I find offers me an efficient friendly service.

I very much doubt there is anything 'illegal' in what is happening.
Crown Post Offices
The Post Office directly manages 373 Crown Post Offices. The Post Office plans to modernise 293 Crown Offices to put these larger high street and city centre branches on a more commercial and sustainable footing. For the remaining 70 Crown offices, the Post Office is seeking larger retail partners.
On 8 February 2013, the Post Office announced that
To maintain our high street presence we will be looking to find retail partners for 70 of our branches enabling us to stay in these locations.
The above is from the following document (Page 8): http://researchbriefings.files.parliame ... N06718.pdf

There is also more reading on PO numbers in the document attached here:
SN02585.pdf
House of Commons Library - BRIEFING PAPER
Number CBP02585, 9 October 2015
Post Office Numbers
(218.51 KiB) Downloaded 30 times
If you think the subject warrants further discussion/debate then maybe a new topic would be justified. I can always merge the relevant posts from this topic into it.
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Re: The future of Crown Post Offices - Are they really necessary?

Post by morty1753 » Tue Aug 23, 2016 10:33 am

boatbuilder wrote: What service do you use them for that you can't get from any of the other 11,200 (approx) P.O. branches that may be inside stores into it.
The only thing I think I use the Crown Post Office for is to validate my passport application before it is sent off. I am not sure if franchised offices can do this

As this only happens twice in 10 years (for me and my wife) I cannot see it being a major inconvenience if it goes.
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Re: The future of Crown Post Offices - Are they really necessary?

Post by SL-Dave » Tue Aug 23, 2016 12:10 pm

My issue is rather simple. At the moment there is a requirement for Crown post offices. If they are phased out, it will then become much easier to privatise the Post Office as they did with Royal Mail. I suspect a long term plan for this, and phasing out the bigger Crown offices make it much easier to sell off shares, the Post Office would become more appealing to investors without large cumbersome offices that have larger overheads.

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