RM called to answer questions to parliament.

[qwerty2]

Cling to the slender hope that this is a different Government, but nothing suggests they’ll do anything

Was a labour MP Led the questions last time so don’t hold your breathe

Who's now a cabinet minister
https://www.darren-jones.co.uk/

Send him an email
darren.jones.mp@parliament.uk

[postslippete]

I just hope somebody asks RM how cutting 2c deliveries to alternative days is going to lead to an improvement in service when at present it's now a total mess when they are trying to deliver 2c every day. I'd also like them to ask for details of the actual number of staff who are off sick v staff vacancies as If find it hard to believe that sickness is the issue rather than just the lack of staff generally.

Good point.

However, I fear that the parliamentary hearing will get somewhat lost on missed deliveries, customer complaints and service standards instead.

RM can't use staff sickness as an excuse when many offices have had overtime bans in place and duties are deliberately left uncovered as a result. The "Get out of Jail free" card that RM used last time round in the select committee may well be played again that the business is still struggling. That allows them to then frame a lot of problems around the financial sustainability of the USO rather than it being due to their own operational decisions.

Letters might be in terminal decline but is the issue really the USO or whether it is simply because the company doesn't really want any of its profitable parcel revenues continuing to subsidise the universal letter service that its legally required to provide?

What would the financial position of RM look like if parcels and letters were accounted for together as one nationwide delivery network rather than as separate profit centres?

This question matters because RM are inevitably going to frame its letters business as loss making and that the USO is financially unsustainable so the delivery frequency must be reduced via USO reform BUT that suggests that letters and parcels should be judged separately when in reality they are both delivered through the same national network!! Both letters and parcels use the same delivery offices, the same vans, the same infrastructure, staff and even last mile routes, so the real question is this

Is the network itself profitable once all the revenue streams are considered?

Its noticeable that RM often separates the two businesses when discussing its profitability suggesting that letters are "loss making" and "parcels are profitable" but in a universal delivery network, separating them is conveniently misleading when the real system is the Total revenue (letters + parcels) minus the Total cost of the delivery network.

[Playmail]

Really question is how much profit would they get if they got rid of dsa and got the savings from odm

[Perseus]

I noticed the CWU have been called up as well. Are they purely to give evidence?

[scotchy1962]

Royal Mail has been bought and sold a few times now, both times the new owners were well aware of what they bought into, the USO didn't suddenly appear and surprise them with what it entails.
Because of the parcel explosion the company has decided, rightly or wrongly, that letters are an inconvenience and are stopping them making more money at the parcels.
In reality they now have no idea how to link the letters and parcels together into duties that could be delivered by posties and still make them a shed-load of cash, nor do i think they are really interested in trying to find a way.
So unless someone is going to separate the two how does anyone move forward?
One solution is to really take the company to task and make them provide the service they bought into, but again i don't think anyone has the bottle to do just that.

[Mr Rush]

Really question is how much profit would they get if they got rid of dsa

Certainly there wouldn't be a middleman taking his cut, though in the past you may recall RM talking about 'co-opetition' and arguing that abolishing DSA would simply result in those letters drying up because the senders would be disuaded by having to pay a realistic price for the service.

[SpacePhoenix]

Really question is how much profit would they get if they got rid of dsa

Certainly there wouldn't be a middleman taking his cut, though in the past you may recall RM talking about 'co-opetition' and arguing that abolishing DSA would simply result in those letters drying up because the senders would be disuaded by having to pay a realistic price for the service.

Getting rid of DSA would also lose RM parcels traffic as well

[postslippete]

Ofcom are very unlikely to remove downstream access because it's their job to protect competition and keep bulk mail prices in check for businesses like banks and utilities. Giving RM a monopoly again risks prices rising even faster than they already have, which could accelerate the decline in letter volumes.

But even if DSA disappeared tomorrow it wouldn’t solve the real problem that letter volumes have been falling for years while the network costs remain largely the same. In the past, RM simply axed duties, made the existing ones bigger and called a revision but the biggest issue facing the company now is that they are trying to run two completely delivery models at once. Letters require predictable rounds and steady workloads while parcels are more variable and better suited to route optimisation. Yet the system still runs fixed duties designed around letters.

Given this it would probably make more sense to go back to basics and have delivery posties delivering the mail and small parcels on alternate days and large parcel drivers delivering all the bulky stuff which seems to be increasing. But they say it's not cost effective. Whatever. I do think before cutting delivery frequency, RM desperately needs to fix the current its underlying workload balance that already relies on overtime, bringing mail back, or cutting corners.

[TopperGas]

I personally think mail is still too high, particularly towards the end of the week, for it to be delivered on alternative days, or even longer intervals under the ODM. What's baffling is why OFCOM ever agreed to the ODM as surely it's obvious a postie can't go from delivering 1 days mail daily to delivering 3 days mail overnight, particularly when they are already fining RM for failing to meet the targets they set

[SpacePhoenix]

I personally think mail is still too high, particularly towards the end of the week, for it to be delivered on alternative days, or even longer intervals under the ODM. What's baffling is why OFCOM ever agreed to the ODM as surely it's obvious a postie can't go from delivering 1 days mail daily to delivering 3 days mail overnight, particularly when they are already fining RM for failing to meet the targets they set

That's likely the mail being held by the DTS system. Most DPs won't have any 1C for days on end so near the end of the week you get shitloads of DSA hitting the time limit with it all being released along with any other mail for the same DPs. It's normally Thursdays for us when loads hit the limit and gets released.

[claretandblue]

I personally think mail is still too high, particularly towards the end of the week, for it to be delivered on alternative days, or even longer intervals under the ODM. What's baffling is why OFCOM ever agreed to the ODM as surely it's obvious a postie can't go from delivering 1 days mail daily to delivering 3 days mail overnight, particularly when they are already fining RM for failing to meet the targets they set

That's likely the mail being held by the DTS system. Most DPs won't have any 1C for days on end so near the end of the week you get shitloads of DSA hitting the time limit with it all being released along with any other mail for the same DPs. It's normally Thursdays for us when loads hit the limit and gets released.

Friday and Saturday are now the busiest days for mail, under odm, these plus Mondays mail would be delivered on the same day.

[Mr Rush]

It's normally Thursdays for us when loads hit the limit and gets released.

Yep, Fridays and Saturdays are like a regular 'movement'.