Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-99)
MR ALAN
COOK CBE, MS
PAULA VENNELLS
AND MR
HOWARD WEBBER
10 JUNE 2008
Q80 Chairman: I suppose we are so
strong on the question of transparency because we are Members
of Parliament and we are under scrutiny at present and more transparency
is required of us. I think the answer to our problems is more
transparency. I think more transparency is the answer to your
problems too, Mr Cook. Mr Webber is nodding again. Let us move
on to the Network Change Programme. This committee stands by a
lot of its earlier recommendations which we will not re-visit
because there is now no chance of getting a change of policy.
For example, this committee stands very strongly behind the view
that six weeks is not an adequate length of time for consultation.
It should have been 12 weeks. It was done for the convenience
of the Post Office, the postmasters and the Government and not
the communities. Many of the problems we have encountered stem
from the fact it was a six-week and not a 12-week consultation.
There is no point going there. We are there now. We are looking
at other issues that flow from that mistake. Postwatch said to
us that once the decision announcement has taken place, there
is not the option of revisiting proposals in the area plan. I
do not know if you want to talk about that briefly, Mr Webber.
That is a function of the short consultation period. We cannot
change that, can we? We are stuck with it now.
Mr Webber: Yes.
Q81 Chairman: Postwatch has done
some very interesting work. Do you want to tell us about your
mystery shopper programme when it comes to information, Mr Webber?
Mr Webber: Yes, this has been
focused on Post Office Ltd's call centre. We were disappointed
that Post Office Ltd decided, on consideration after we made the
case last time, not to allow comments to be recorded over the
phone in general rather than requiring them only to be made in
writing. I think that decision placed a greater responsibility
still on Post Office Ltd to make sure that taking written comments
was made as simple as possible. We carried out our original mystery
shopping exercise in November. I talked about it when I was last
before the committee in January. We carried it out again; we re-ran
it in April and May. We were disappointed that in a number of
respects things had not improved. What had improved was the technical
side of it. It is now a lot easier and requires fewer steps to
get through to a human being at the Post Office Ltd call centre.
What was disappointing, though, was that the lack of consistently
accurate information which we had noted on the first set of research
was repeated the second time round in terms of the freepost addresses
provided by the call centre staff, the email addresses provided
by the call centre staff and the factual information provided
by them. Our sample was small; it was only about 170 calls. In
one sense, it was not a scientific sample. But these are facts.
These are things that our regional committee members and regional
staff who made the calls discovered, that they were having to
wait; three people had to wait for more than five minutes and
there were a number of cases where the wrong information was provided.
We are not saying that the percentage figures we discovered of
misinformation were necessarily typical of calls as a whole, but
the fact is that they happened and they should not have happened.
We are disappointed that the improvements which we had agreed
with Post Office Ltd should be made following the last lot of
research and also following the exchanges we had with them before
this committee have not actually been put into practice.
Q82 Chairman: We are now more than
half-way through the process and still you cannot get factual
information through the help line services that is accurate?
Mr Webber: There were errors,
yes.
Q83 Chairman: There is some concern
here. Do you share the concern that is expressed?
Ms Vennells: Yes, we do. I should
register that I responded to Howard and said how disappointed
we were that this was the case. The changes were put in place
and, as Howard said, the survey they did was possibly not representative.
In that particular period of time we had 170 calls and the call
centres were handling 30,000, so it is a very small percentage,
but that does not take away from the fact that the information
has to be accurate and people have to get through to us as quickly
as they can. What we have done since is reinforce the changes
that we had put in place and we have also done a couple of additional
things. We have done our own survey. This is not because I would
say this, would I not? We did not find the same level of difficulties.
Again, ours was not representative either in terms of the number
of calls, and so what we have done is that we are now going to
commission some representative research. We have gone back; we
have done more training of call centre staff. We do that on a
regular basis and we will be putting in extra. One of the problems
that Howard raised with us was the issue of access to emails through
to the website. What we have done is to purchase Networkchange.co.uk
as well as Network.change.co.uk because in a very small number
of cases that was proving a problem with people getting their
emails sent back to them. That said, of the level of communication
we had during local consultations, we have had about 120,000 pieces
so far, over 30,000 have been through email. It does not seem
to be a very significant problem, but again it is Postwatch's
responsibility to point these things out to us and we are grateful
because that is their role as scrutineer. We will respond on every
single occasion that they come back to us.
Q84 Chairman: I want you to give
you the opportunity to talk about the bigger picture. Let me just
have one other whinge about the detail. It was very disappointing
in your last response to us that you effectively dismissed the
idea that MPs should have more notice of closure programmes and
you subsequently slipped out a statement saying that you would
give us an extra period. You did not tell us, this committee,
that you had changed your mind. It is this point about communication;
it seems to come last in the list of things you are doing. We
would have welcomed that unreservedly; we are pleased about it
but you never actually told us. Why is that?
Mr Cook: I did not realise we
had not told you.
Q85 Chairman: Do I have that right?
We were never told.
Mr Cook: I sort of came away from
the last select committee thinking we were going to need to extend
the period.
Q86 Chairman: The outcome was very
satisfactory.
Ms Vennells: Our apologies for
not writing to you personally but we certainly—
Chairman: Several days after the press
notice, we were sent the press notice on the issue saying this
would happen. We did get the press notice a few days later.
Mr Hoyle: The press are more important.
Q87 Chairman: It is good and thank
you for doing it. We welcome it.
Mr Cook: I left the room thinking
we had to do something about it. If I had left you with the impression
that we were not going to do anything about it, then that is my
fault.
Q88 Chairman: Before we go into detailed
questions about aspects of the Network Change Programme, is there
anything you want to say about it to bring us up to date on figures?
Postwatch have been very helpful in giving an update on figures,
which we appreciate.
Mr Cook: Could I say where we
are at the moment and set this in context? You are right that
we are just a little over half-way through the programme. The
last of the area plans is underway and we are working on it; 30
of the public consultations are complete or underway; we have
had about 110,000 separate pieces of input which have been logged
and recorded; 784 branches have closed so far. As I said earlier,
it is 207 not 201 proposals have been withdrawn prior to local
consultation and a further 41 have been withdrawn as a result
of consultation. Of the 41 that were withdrawn, 24 replacement
proposals were put forward in their place. We have opened 72 outreach
outlets and a total of 264 further outreach outlets are in the
pipeline. As you know, we have been asked by Government to look
at the increased use of outreach type solutions in urban locations.
We are also making real improvements and investments in the network
going forward as a result of all these changes, so we have committed
so far to specific improvements in over 200 branches, and these
would usually be around access or possibly extra counter position
or whatever. It is still quite early but the early signs are that
we are retaining customers, even as the branches close, so the
migration figures that we have seen so far would suggest that
in excess of 80% of the income is still coming in but to a neighbouring
branch, which is obviously really important for the viability
of the neighbouring sub-post office.
Q89 Chairman: You were working on
the figure of 80%?
Mr Cook: Yes, that is the aspiration.
It is a bit premature yet to say we will beat that because the
first branch did not close until January. We do not really have
a wide body of evidence yet. Now that we are further through the
programme, the review process is examining, at the request of
Howard Webber's organisation, more individual decisions. We have
had our first stage 4 review, as we call it, which is a reference
to the Royal Mail Group Chairman, Allan Leighton, and that one
resulted in the branch being retained. There are challenges and
uncertainties remaining, particularly around our tender for the
Post Office Current Account. You have heard my comments already
about our commitment to the current size of the network. On local
funding, we have had some really encouraging conversations now
with Essex County Council. It may well be that you will want to
cover that separate topic and so maybe I will not say more about
that but wait until we get that point. That is an update anyway
as to the latest numbers.
Q90 Chairman: Mr Webber, is there
anything you want to say by way of general introduction before
we go into this?
Mr Webber: Probably not other
than to highlight one of the points that Alan made, which may
illustrate that Post Office Ltd could be making more than they
do of the good news stories. Of the 42 post offices which they
have, as it were, been reprieved following public consultation,
only 24 replacement branches have been put up. That was one of
the key themes of the last time that Alan and I were separately
in front of the committee, that whenever a post office was reprieved,
then another one was chosen in its place. It is by no means a
matter of routine that a substitute post office is put up for
closure. That is a very welcome development.
Q91 Chairman: That is on top of the
changes made in the previous consultation phase as a result of
your input?
Mr Webber: Yes.
Q92 Chairman: We expressed concern,
and we were right to express concern, that as we were right at
the end of the process, we had to take whatever was left of the
target and meet it, which could be good or bad news depending
where we are on 2,500. Where are we in terms of the overall figure
of, we have been told, 2,500?
Mr Cook: It would be bad but we
will not do that. I think I did say at the last committee that
we did not expect that we would end up closing 2,500.
Q93 Chairman: You thought the figure
would be 2,400.
Mr Cook: Yes, and I said I would
guess we would lose, say, up to 100. You have just heard Howard
say the numbers: 42 have been overturned and 20 odd put back.
At the moment we are heading south of 2,500. The process that
we will follow in the very last plan is exactly the same as we
would follow in the first plan, so there is no desire to do anything
other than that.
Q94 Chairman: So you are on target
to meet the Government's objective with a slight downward movement
on the total?
Mr Cook: Yes, but that is not
a problem to come in at a bit less than 2,500.
Chairman: It will not surprise you to
know that you made one very big error of judgment—I say
you there but it may be other parties involved—which Mr
Hoyle is about to explore with you in Mr Hoyle's constituency.
Q95 Mr Hoyle: What is taken into
account in the appeals process?
Mr Cook: The whole rationale for
choosing one branch over another.
Q96 Mr Hoyle: What is the rationale?
Mr Cook: First and foremost, we
have to meet the Government's access criterion and then we need
to make sure that we have a uniform spread of branches across
an area.
Q97 Mr Hoyle: What can we use as
an appeal to keep a post office open? What is taken into account?
Mr Cook: Typically the sort of
issues that have arisen that have resulted in a proposed closure
being overturned have been, for example, around public transport
where we had a presumption, when proposing a closure, that access
to the nearest branch would be achieved by a given set of public
transport which in reality is either not there or is planned to
be removed or whatever by the local authority or a change in the
population density in the area.
Q98 Chairman: Can I ask Mr Webber
if he agrees with that analysis?
Mr Webber: Yes. I could give a
couple of examples, if that would be useful, of where proposals
have been overturned at the review stage. For example, at Micklegate
in York there was the fourth stage that Alan mentioned, which
went to the Royal Mail Chairman. It is a case where the post office
had rather more than 1,800 customer visits a week and it was going
to close in York, and the receiving post office was apparently
going to take only 43% of that business, so 57% would presumably
have been lost. It seemed to us that either that meant there would
be serious damage to customers in that 1,000 customer visits a
week would be lost to the Post Office network in general and 1,000
customers would be disappointed, or the receiving post office,
if the Post Office Ltd figures were wrong, would be just grossly
overloaded because too many of those 1,800 would be overcrowding
it. Allan Leighton did agree with our argument on that and the
office was saved. There is another one just across the river from
here, Lambeth Walk, where we worked very closely with Kate Hoey.
There were a whole range of factors there. There were new housing
developments, it is an area of urban deprivation, there was no
direct public transport link to the receiving branch and there
was a high proportion of the population who were in sheltered
accommodation and so on. None of these factors on its own might
have been sufficient to be a killer argument but together they
were very strong arguments that Kate Hoey and we put together.
We persisted with that, we escalated the case and the branch was
saved.
Q99 Mr Hoyle: Would another factor
be if your original report was wrong?
Mr Cook: By definition, the examples
I gave would be where we got it wrong because if we assumed that
a given set of public transport was to be available and it was
not—
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