Collection Revisions : 6 Phase Process and Guidelines

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Letter to Branches




No. 883/10 Ref. 532 Date: 11th October 2010


To All Branches with CWU Members



Dear Colleagues,

Collection Revisions – 6 Phase Process and Guidelines

During the course of the national negotiations dealing with Business Transformation 2010 and Beyond, the subject of collections was raised and a commitment received from Royal Mail to deal with this as soon as practicably possible. Unfortunately the only reference to collections in the agreement is with regard to the lump sums and trigger payments and no detailed discussions took place during the course of the talks. We therefore approached Royal Mail regarding the commitment they had given with a view to concluding an agreement covering collection revisions.

The formal talks with Royal Mail commenced in May and have progressed on a number of issues since. The collections revisions have now been concluded and the two documents covering revisions were endorsed by the Postal Executive on the 20th July 2010. These documents are also supported by a collections workshop identical to the workshop for delivery revisions. Due to technical problems and points of ongoing clarification the release of these documents has been delayed until now.

The 6 phase process for collection revisions is identical to that for deliveries and involves the CWU throughout the process from start to finish. We also agreed that Senior CWU Officials will be taken through the Collection Revision Planner’s course and will mean our Senior Representatives will be trained to the same level as Royal Mail planners. Planners and senior CWU Field Officials involved in a collection best practice revision will therefore benefit from having attended the training courses for up front revision preparation activity and undertaking collection routing using Georoute v2008, thus enabling our Representatives to effectively support, coach and mentor Unit Reps throughout the process in line with the agreement. We will review training requirements following this training.

All information relating to the revision will be shared with CWU Representatives who will also have access to all Royal Mail intranet documentation and support. The revised collection routes will be constructed utilising the Collection Routing Tool which has built in default values for road speeds and service times (time for emptying boxes etc), however, these defaults can be changed locally based upon local knowledge and experience and can be supplemented through manual testing/sampling.

The Collection Revision Guidelines have been finalised with full CWU involvement and are designed to support the 6 phase revision process. The Guidelines also make it clear that the agreements and the new approach to collection revisions adopts all the principles, key statements and spirit and intent contained in the Business Transformation 2010 and Beyond Agreement. The guidelines also contain reference to employee aspirations, earnings and training and upskilling. Key bullet points from the guidelines to support this are

• Taking fully into account employee needs and aspirations
• Improving Health and Safety and working environment
• Increasing employee involvement and commitment
• Improving attendances and family friendly duties
• Taking into account earnings opportunities for employees consistent with working time legislation

The revision process includes a locally agreed terms of reference for the revision. The most contentious part of the agreed documents will be the inclusion of the paragraph below. However it would be easy to bury our heads in the sand and ignore the reality of the environment we now operate in, or our commitment to business transformation. Our view was that we should be consistent, upfront with our members and make the position clear with regard to collection frequency.

Collection Point Clearances - Postboxes and POL Outlets

The number and frequency of clearances that should be provided to Postboxes and POL outlets will be determined and agreed locally based on mail volumes and mail centre capacity and geographical location of collection points. Unwarranted Postbox relief collections should be planned for removal based upon volume in line with the following guidelines from the Collection Point Clearance Guide and in conjunction with the statement above:

• Less than 100 items a day - generally no relief visit should be planned unless the Postbox is associated with a POL outlet where the relief’s should be geared to any POL relief clearance

• 100 – 199 items a day – generally a single relief collection should be planned at the optimum time to maximise mail flow and efficiency

• Over 200 items a day – in these circumstances there may be the case for an extra relief in line with Postbox capacity and local mail flow needs. Postboxes with over 400 items may justify a third relief although ordinarily these will be the exception

• Specifically on a Monday, based on local needs, it is advised that specific Monday only relief’s are considered to target known heavier boxes, typically considering those with average day volumes in the 50-99 items range.


This will undoubtedly have an impact on collections in terms of the number of visits that are carried out each day but the reality is how do you justify collecting from a box 2 or 3 times a day when it only contains 80 items in total all day. The data below and the increasing use of automation coupled with containerisation are what is driving the change.

There are currently 116000 Post-boxes in the UK

Firms’ collections generate 60% of volume, only 4% of firms get a relief collection.
Post-boxes generate 27% of volume, but 50% get a relief collection.
The remaining 13% of volume comes from POL outlets

32,000 Post-boxes (27% of the total) now generate only 1% of overall collection volume.
70% now receive less than 100 items daily. Yet 50% receive one or more visits daily

64% of workload associated with collections is servicing Post-boxes
28% of workload associated with collections is servicing firms
8% of workload associated with collections is servicing POL

The agreed documents put the CWU right at the heart of change in the Collections part of Royal Mail and achieve everything and more than we have achieved in the Business Transformation Agreement. The documents and workshop will afford our Distribution Reps the same involvement and access to information that we have agreed in other parts of the industry. We are also aware that a number of collection units are already engaged in discussions with Royal Mail regarding collections, with some already having concluded them. A common sense approach should be applied to those units who have already engaged in discussions.

Any enquiries to Bob Gibson’s Office, quoting reference 532
Email address: hnutley@cwu.org


Yours sincerely


Bob Gibson
Assistant Secretary

Attached Files

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