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The Post Office will close more than 100 branches, placing hundreds of jobs at risk, as the state-owned UK business seeks to put itself on a sounder financial footing following an IT scandal.
The state-owned company said on Wednesday that it would offload 115 wholly-owned branches within its network, placing about 1,000 jobs at risk. Hundreds of jobs at the company’s headquarters are also at risk.
Post Office interim chair Nigel Railton said the closures, which account for roughly 1 per cent of a network of more than 11,600 branches, could also lead to branches being transferred to retail partners or sub-postmasters.
The proposals form part of a strategic review that also sets out ambitions to increase sub-postmasters’ share of revenue, pushing average branch pay up by roughly £22,000 after five years.
“We can, and will, restore pride in working for a business with a legacy of service, rather than one of scandal,” Railton said at a press conference in London. The plans require the approval of the government.
The 388-year-old institution has struggled to retain relevance in a competitive market for parcel delivery where many consumers and businesses use services that cut the Post Office out of the process for sending and receiving packages.
Although it has attempted to reinvent itself by providing banking services, the Post Office still receives ten of millions of pounds in state subsidies each year.
The business reported pre-tax losses of £81mn in 2022-23, down from £131mn the previous year.
The long-running Post Office IT scandal, in which nearly 1,000 sub-postmasters were wrongly prosecuted using flawed data between 1999 and 2015, has preoccupied executives.
Nick Read will step down as Post Office chief executive in March following a five-year stint that was overshadowed by one of the UK’s most serious miscarriages of justice.
Appearing before a public inquiry into the scandal last month, Read said the business had “more to do” to win the trust of sub-postmasters.
The Post Office is wholly owned by the taxpayer, but is run at arms-length by the government through UK Government Investments, a body responsible for managing a portfolio of wholly or partially state-owned companies such as NatWest and Channel 4.
Gareth Thomas, postal affairs minister, has commissioned a separate review into the future of the Post Office as the government considers the viability of mutualisation as a form of ownership, among other options.
The Post Office said its “new deal” for sub-postmasters would “dramatically increase postmasters’ share of revenues . . . and make it work better for local communities, independent postmasters and our partners”.
The Department for Business and Trade said: “The government is in active discussion with Nigel Railton on his plans to put postmasters at the centre of the organisation and strengthen the Post Office network.”
