Government prepares to courier 300,000 cheques a week

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Government prepares to courier 300,000 cheques a week to post offices to avoid strike

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The national postal strike is set to throw the pensions and benefits system into chaos, with the Government forced to pay for couriers to ferry more than 300,000 cheques to post offices - and then force people to pick them up, it emerged yesterday.

Campaigners said the industrial action was likely to hit the most vulnerable groups in society who rely on their weekly payments being delivered to their home address. Many of them are too elderly or too immobile to leave the house.

The news came as 120,000 postal workers started voting on whether to launch a national strike in a bitter row over pay, jobs and services. The result of the ballot will be known early next month, threatening widespread disruption to mail deliveries.

The Daily Telegraph can disclose that officials at the Department for Work and Pensions have been making “contingency plans” to send out the cheques to 11,500 post offices so people can collect them.

However, anyone having to collect their pension payments could have to travel an average of over two miles to their local post office.

The Government came up with a similar plan during the last national strike in 2007 when it hired Dutch courier company TNT to deliver cheques to post offices for hundreds of thousands of people.

The cheques are for people claiming benefits, Job Seekers’ Allowance and the state pension. Pensioner and poverty campaigners said the news showed how the strike would chaos for the most vulnerable in society.

Rob Tolan, senior policy advisor at the anti-poverty charity Elizabeth Finn Care, said: “It’s vital that a better thought-out contingency plan is put together to ensure that they receive their payments during the postal strikes.

“Many of the people that claim benefits are old and disabled and are not physically able to collect their payments at the Post Office, which particularly in rural areas are few and far between.

“Aside from issues of mobility, there is also the additional financial cost for collection to be considered: 25 per cent of the people that come to us can’t afford public transport; 55 per cent couldn’t even afford to visit friends and family.”

A spokesman for Help the Aged/Age Concern added: “People that receive their cheques by post still have to go to the Post Office to cash them, so the contingency plan should prevent too much extra difficulty.

“However, for people who receive it by post and then authorise someone else to cash it, it could be potentially more difficult as the person would have to pick up the cheque, return to person to authorise, return to post office to collect cash and return to person.”

The plans are likely to cost tens of thousands of pounds. A spokesman for the department said: “A small proportion of our customers receive their payments by cheque. We have contingency arrangements in place to ensure those customers will continue to receive payments by cheque.

“The vast majority - 98 per cent - of our customers have their benefit or pension paid directly into an account and will be unaffected by a disruption to Royal Mail services.”

Yesterday the postal union and the Royal Mail blamed each other for the dispute amid claims that postmen and women were being put under “unbearable pressure” to implement changes.

Dave Ward, deputy general secretary of the CWU said a “period of calm” was needed over the next six weeks to give the two sides time to discuss how the service should be modernised.

Mark Higson, Royal Mail’s managing director, said the changes being made were in response to falling volumes of mail as people switched to other forms of communication such as emails and texts.

Yesterday it emerged that between 9million and 25 million letters and parcels are piled up in backlogs in mail centres and sorting offices after a rolling series of strikes since mid-June.

John Cridland, the deputy Director-General of the CBI, said: “The localised strikes have caused regrettable disruption. We have noticed a particular impact on small companies and those in areas like direct mail.

“Many firms are struggling in the economic downturn, making them particularly vulnerable. A wider national postal strike could make a critical difference to some companies, and risk lasting damage to them.”

The postal dispute is also threatening to disrupt the annual political party conferences. Labour and Tory officials fear that many of those attending will not receive security passes for the conference venues that have been sent in the post.

[Stormproof]

I thought most benefits were done by electronic transfer. I know TNT delivered them to PO's in 2007.

[DGP1]

I'm with you Stormproof, I thought you had to pay them into a bank account these days.

[Ahebban]

Even allowing for Electronic Transfer, had the government not authorised the demise of so many post offices, urban and rural, people would most probably not have quite so far to travel to pick up their cheque.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

I'm with you Stormproof, I thought you had to pay them into a bank account these days.

I must deliver between 10 and 20 each and every day.

[not me]

I'm with you Stormproof, I thought you had to pay them into a bank account these days.

I must deliver between 10 and 20 each and every day.

agreed,and none of them for 'societys most vunerable'

[robd]

I'm with you Stormproof, I thought you had to pay them into a bank account these days.

No,the 'locals' where i deliver can't get a bank account,but they can get a 40" plasma!
incidentally,it's not just benefits there sat waiting for,i still deliver milk tokens!

[TrueBlueTerrier]

I'm with you Stormproof, I thought you had to pay them into a bank account these days.

No,the 'locals' where i deliver can't get a bank account,but they can get a 40" plasma!
incidentally,it's not just benefits there sat waiting for,i still deliver milk tokens!

same here - milk token day means I am going to a minimum 90% of all my DPs