LTB 190/26 – Points of Clarification – USO Deployment
No. 190/26
6th July 2026
Dear Colleague,
Points of Clarification USO Deployment
Over the last few weeks, several Divisional Reps have raised questions through the Regional Steering groups or contacted us directly for clarification on parts of the agreement. Given the complexity of the USO Agreement, further guidance was always expected, especially when dealing with 1,250 different delivery units.
Negotiations took place over the last two weeks and we reached agreed positions on the Points of Clarification. We then put this before the Postal Executive and whilst they welcomed the overall points of clarification and progress, they believed there was an over promotion of the Assurance process which was not compliant with the words within the national agreement.
Further exchanges took place with Royal Mail and the CWU offered alternative words, which would have met the approval of the Postal Executive to resolve the issue of Assurance. However, the business has confirmed they are unwilling to make the required changes and therefore as a result we do not have an agreed Joint Points of Clarification.
As a result, Royal Mail have informed us that they now intend to issue the Points of Clarification document to their managers and the Regional Steering Groups on Monday morning at 10:00am. Therefore, it is important to outline to Branches that the wording in the following document was negotiated by the union.
The Points of Clarification covered the following:
- Units can align with Wednesday start times on USO deployment across the whole week.
- Units can, as part of the formal review, propose changes to the standard attendance length from Monday to Friday.
- Units can review the standard length of Saturday in January 2027.
- A pragmatic approach will be taken if units go past the 4:30 last letter to select a duty option.
- Confirming that if you are in unit where a Wallington /banked duty makes up less that 40% of the duty set that you keep your banked duty and move to the 2 in 5 Banked duty.
- Confirming that if you are in a unit where a banked duty is between 60% to 100% then you will be able to move to 2 in 5 banked option.
- There are 37 units where Wallington/Banked duties make up between 41% and 59% of the total duty patterns, these will now be reviewed by the Regional Steering Groups.
- Clarifying that indoor performance should be based on the unit’s current indoor performance.
For reference these are the lifts from the agreement:
Each Delivery Office is different, and both parties recognise the benefit of local knowledge. This agreement will allow local knowledge from Customer Operations Managers (COMs), CWU Reps, and all employees in the DO to influence key decisions to ensure successful deployment within the framework of principles laid out in the full deployment agreement, appendices, and via the joint review and governance processes.
As part of the planning and deployment processes, Dos can recommend localised solutions via the Regional Steering Groups (RSGs) (as outlined in the full Deployment Agreement). All Dos will be assured via a standard process, the purpose of which is to identify non-standard solutions and refer to the RSGs which will have full autonomy to agree or reject the changes.
We have now put in place a process with Divisional Reps to give us regular updates on the progress of the regional steering Groups, to ensure that the above commitments are honoured by their Regional Steering Groups and where assurance is not adhering to the wider application of the agreement, it will need to escalated to the National CWU for resolution.
Any enquiries relating to the content of this LTB should be referred to the Postal Department at hford@cwu.org.
Yours sincerely,
Martin Walsh
Deputy General Secretary (Postal)
Andy Furey
Assistant Secretary
Tony Bouch
Assistant Secretary
Davie Robertson
Assistant Secretary