Farmers fear Royal Mail cuts would be 'disastrous'

[POSTMAN]

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FARMERS have said their businesses would be ‘severely disadvantaged’ if Royal Mail ends its obligation to deliver post six days a week.

Farmers across the UK have expressed anger and frustration at the move which they claimed would see people in rural areas treated as ‘second-class citizens’.

Royal Mail, which was part-privatised last year, warned increased competition was endangering its Government-mandated ‘universal service’, which guarantees a single-price postal service to all UK addresses, including remote rural areas.

The Farmers Union of Wales (FUW) said farmers across the UK relied on the postal service in order to receive documents such as legislative requirements and legal notifications with strict response deadlines. Failure to respond to these documents could incur major financial penalties.

FUW director of agricultural policy Nick Fenwick said farmers could receive up to 3,000 pages of information from regulators in one year.

“While the provision of information online is likely to increase with time, access to broadband remains limited in vast areas of Wales, making paper correspondence essential.

“As with other areas of the law, legal notifications must be delivered to the doorstep or farmgate as hard copies, since it would be wholly unacceptable, and presumably illegal in many cases, to make such notifications via text messages or emails.”

Given farms and rural communities may be significant distances from hospitals, banks, and solicitors’ offices, and in areas where public transport was irregular or non-existent, Mr Fenwick said the timely receipt of notifications by post was ‘essential’.

UK Rural Affairs Minister and North Cornwall MP Dan Rogerson said any change to the Royal Mail charter could be ‘disastrous’ for those in rural communities.

The CLA and other organisations have written to regulator Ofcom calling for the regulatory body to seriously consider the extension of the universal service obligation to other operators in the postal market.

Last week, Royal Mail chiefs said increased competition from companies such as Amazon was threatening the company’s ability to deliver letters to all parts of the UK.

[Bernardson]

Hands up all those tory farmers!