LTB 151/11 Census 2011

[POSTMAN]

To: All Branches with Postal Members
CWU Divisional Reps
CWU Area Delivery, Distribution and Processing Reps
CWU Area Health & Safety reps


Dear Colleague

Census 2011

Branches and representatives will probably be aware that a Census will be carried out this year. This will involve the posting of circa 26 million items across the UK with items due to start moving to Mail Centres and on to Delivery Offices on the 2nd 3rd and 4th March. Regions will hold details of the actual volumes and this information should be procured by Divisional reps to assist area/local discussions.

As far as the detail is concerned Royal Mail has been successful in winning the following elements of the contract for collection and delivery of the census items:

England, Wales, Northern Ireland: Delivery and collection of census forms. This amounts to about 26 million delivery items and around 23 million for collection and return processing (as householders can complete the form online if desired).

Scotland: Delivery of residue items as a subcontractor to the main contract winner. This will be within remote areas and accounts for around 145k items in week commencing 14th March. Post back of all items will be via Royal Mail.

Delivery of the items in England and Wales is due to commence from Monday the 7th March with the items targeted for delivery on the 7th, 8th and 9th to avoid the heaviest delivery days of the week. It should be noted that no items can be delivered before the 7th March. It is expected that 70% of all items will be available for delivery this week in England and Wales with the remaining 30% (plus the remote parts of Scotland) being available for delivery on the 14th, 15th and 16th March. N.Ireland will have its own arrangements with all items being delivered w/c 14th March which will account for about 750k – 800k of the items.

The items themselves will be C4 in size and addressed to the ‘Householder’ and are expected to weigh 0.129kg in England, N.Ireland and Scotland. The Welsh version will weigh 0.214kg due to being a bilingual version. This indicates that there will probably be weight on delivery and replenishment issues to deal with and suitable arrangements must be in place to deal with this. It is important for Branches to note that this is a valuable contract for Royal Mail which was won in the face of stiff competition, and we hope that there will be a mutual spirit of cooperation when dealing with local arrangements to handle these items.

All the items will be in Yorks and trays and will be walksorted to deliveries. Some trays may contain mail for more than one delivery but they will be bundled separately. However, the walksort database was downloaded by the printing company in Nov 2010, so there will probably be some missorts where routes have changed since that time.

Where an address does not exist, or is not accessible (e.g. dangerous/ building site) the items should be annotated with a Return to Sender label, and put into trays to be routed back to the mail centre and from there to the client.

Local Collection units will need to discuss arrangements for the collection of the items once completed and posted back in the system for return. This will require targeted relief collections based on local knowledge and experience and will also include arrangements for Sunday collections, especially on the 27th March, once again utilising local knowledge and experience. All efforts should be made to avoid overflowing collection/pillar boxes. Royal Mail has also requested support from our members in this regard and any help in feeding information back to Royal Mail managers on any full boxes that are observed whilst on collection or delivery will appreciated. Particular attention will need to be paid to collections in areas with a high concentration of ‘Lamp Post Boxes’ (e.g. Northern Ireland/ Wales) as these boxes can become quickly filled by a few C4 items.

In addition arrangements will also need to be put in place at Mail Centres to be able to handle the despatch and return of the items especially with regard to the use of Flat Sorting Machines (FSM). A key part of Royal Mail winning the contract was the company’s ability to scan item barcodes on the FSM so that the Office for National Statistics know which addresses have replied.

It is important that CWU representatives engage with management at an early stage to ensure suitable arrangements are put in place to handle these items safely, securely and effectively.


Any enquiries to Bob Gibson’s Office, quoting reference 535 Email address: hnutley@cwu.org or Phil Browne quoting ref L23.05 Email address: pbrowne@cwu.org.

Yours sincerely

Bob Gibson Phil Browne
Assistant Secretary Acting Assistant Secretary