Post Office could be owned by its workers, government says

The post office can be converted into an employee -owned business, the government has suggested, as it launched a public consultation on the future of service.

The business, which operates counters or shops at more than 11,500 places across the country, is fully owned and subsidized by the tax payer.

Plans for mutuality have been subject to discussion for more than a decade, but were sidelined as a scam around the incorrect confidence of sub-postmasters.

“It is clear that we need a fresh vision,” the post office minister, Gareth Thomas said, launched a green paper on the future of service.

The government said that it wanted to change the culture of the organization in view of the scam, in which hundreds of sub-postmasters had incorrectly alleged false accounting and theft, which were stealing in branches running on the basis of the data of the guilty software.

The scam was brought into the limelight last week last week, which was wrong, the first report of its findings was published, focusing on the impact on sub-postmasters and their families.

Mr. Thomas said that the post office had “a serious past, a poor commercial track record and unstable leadership”.

But 12-week counseling He said that “an honest conversation about an honest conversation that people want and needs from their post office in the ahead,” will mark the onset of “.

This includes whether the post office must still be required to operate 11,500 branches at present.

The minister announced another £ 118M to support the work already going on to change the post office.

Post Office is the largest retail network in the UK, but most of its counters work within other shops, such as newsgents and convenience stores or even libraries.

Along with the question of ownership, the government is considering what services should be provided to the post office in future, especially in banking services, as high road bank branches are closed.

Currently customers can use the post office and pay to withdraw money from accounts in most banks. They can buy foreign currency, pick up welfare benefits and pay payments, and submit passport applications. But the entire range of services is given only on large sites.

Research published with green paper suggests that the “social value” of £ 5.2bn per year in the post office adds £ 1.3BN £ 1.3BN annually into small and medium -sized businesses.

But the business has fought to earn profit, relying on tens of million pounds state subsidies, as customers posted less letters and moved to online services and other delivery operators, bypassing the post office counters.

According to the post office, currently 99.7% of the population lives within three miles of a post office and its 4,000 branches are open seven days a week.

The post office has already announced that it is transferring its last remaining standalone shops to the franchise model, running on the majority, which empowers franchise-holders to offer post office services with other retail services.

However, depending on the results of the consultation, the ownership may have another shake-up for the structure, as the government wants ways to turn on the business.

Last year, the post office minister said that about half the branches were profitable in Parliament or only a small profit was earned from the post office business. This has stagnated the payment for postmasters.

The idea of making the post office a cooperative organization was raised in 2012, when it was divided by the Royal Mail, the service that delivers the post to the door.

Many small businesses work on some types of shared-owned models, but the most famous big businesses of Britain run in this way are John Lewis partnership and cooperative.

In interconnected organizations, employees are more closely associated with decision making and have more stake in business performance.

The government said that switching to a mutual model would be “complex, time -consuming and potentially expensive” and said that any such changes would have to wait until the post office achieved “financial and operational stability”.

However, it swams two options for prolonged changes:

• A joint venture between the government and a sub-postmaster owned to run the post office
• A charter model – as used for BBCs and Universities – with the establishment of the government’s guiding principles, but abandoning its ownership role

Supporters of post office mutuality argue that the Khitij scam would not have happened, the staff were part of the management.

Post Office CEO Neil Brockleharst said that Green Paper “offered his role in one-decade-a decade opportunity to hold national conversations about the future of our post offices and his role in supporting communities across the UK.