Postcomm Work Plan Opens for Consultation

[Ahebban]

Postcomm work plan opens for consultation
January, 28 2010

Postcomm has today published for consultation its expected work plan for the next two years.

The Forward Work Plan outlines Postcomm’s proposed activities from now until April 2012, looking at how we regulate the postal industry within the scope of our powers and duties. The formal consultation period will close on March 28, 2010.

Chief executive Tim Brown said: “Our primary goal is to protect the universal service and the interests of customers. We want to encourage Royal Mail and other operators to innovate and become more efficient in meeting customers’ changing needs.”

Postcomm will be seeking to provide a stable regulatory environment that achieves the following key objectives:

... Ensures the future of the universal postal service and protects the interests of customers;
... Allows freedom for Royal Mail and its competitors to innovate and become more efficient in meeting customers’
changing needs;
... Has flexibility and resilience so that it can be applied within any future statutory framework

The Forward Work Plan aims to introduce a new regulatory framework in April 2012. This timetable is subject to consultation and the agreement of Royal Mail to the necessary licence changes. It will be designed to last for a number of years to provide consistency and, to the maximum extent possible, regulatory certainty and stability.

Some changes to the current regulatory framework could, however, be in place by April 2011. Our work will initially concentrate on creating the right conditions and ensuring there are the right safeguards for the longer term. We will deregulate where there is sufficient evidence and the necessary safeguards are in place.

Postcomm’s work over the next two years will cover three areas:

Protecting the universal service: Assessing customers’ needs from a universal service, covering issues such as the range of services provided, quality of service and whether the universal service is affordable for customers;

Analysis of markets: Investigating further the economic markets in which Royal Mail operates, assessing market power and identifying where the markets fails to protect the interests of customers;

Regulatory safeguards: Developing the necessary protections for customers and other operators. This will include a review of the way Royal Mail provides cost and revenue information; considering the nature of the controls on Royal Mail’s pricing and the scope of them in future; and reviewing the “Access”1 environment to give Royal Mail more freedom where appropriate in the upstream bulk mail postal market while safeguarding competition to give customers choice.

Since the postponement of the Postal Services Bill last summer, we have been talking with a wide range of customers, trade bodies, operators (including Royal Mail) and other interested parties about the future direction regulation now needs to take.

1 In the UK postal market, there are generally two forms of competition to Royal Mail. These are (1) competition that collects and sorts mail, but pays to use Royal Mail’s final sorting and delivery facilities to offer products to customers; and (2) competition that uses its own network to collect, sort and deliver mail. With the first type, Royal Mail is still delivering the mail, but the competitor is undertaking all the collection and initiation sorting on behalf of its customers. It is here that it competes with Royal Mail on cost and, subsequently, the price offered. This type of competition is usually referred to as “Access competition”. In this instance they are access customers of Royal Mail. The second type is usually referred to as “end-to-end competition”. Royal Mail continues to deliver 99% of mail in the regulated area.

Please visit our website to view the document: http://www.psc.gov.uk/news-and-events/n ... ation.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Ahebban]

[oypostie]

How about Postcomm plans to shut itself down. It's caused more problems than it's solved. If competition is what is required then lets have it without strings

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Notice it keeps mentioning customers which is designed to make it look like its protecting the service as best it can. But dig deeper and understand the language better and it becomes clearer.

Customers at Postcon are in fact senders and therefore are big business and DSA firms. The receivers of mail are not mentioned at all as in Postcons mind they are consumers and therefore not relevant.

With that in mind "Assessing customers’ needs from a universal service" becomes something different.