Memorandum submitted by the Home Office
HOME OFFICE USE OF POST OFFICES
Thank you for your letter of 4 March seeking
information on the Home Office's current and future use of the
Post Office to provide services. Our responses to your three questions
are as follows.
1. What access to government services do
you currently provide through post offices, and how extensively
are these services offered?
Support payments to asylum seekers
Currently, the United Kingdom Border Agency
(UKBA), an Executive Agency of the Home Office, use the Post Office
to provide support payments to asylum seekers. These arrangements
have been in place since April 2000. In all, 530 Post Offices
are used nationwide. The current contract ends in late 2010.
Passport "Check & Send" service
The Check & Send service for UK passports
is currently provided by the Post Office to the Identity &
Passport Service (IPS). In summary, the Post Office provides a
basic check that the customer's application has been properly
completed, that the correct documents are present and they collect
the correct fee for the service required. Once this is complete
they provide a receipt to the customer and despatch the application
to the designated regional passport office.
The contract with Post Office Ltd runs until
January 2010 with an option to extend annually until January
2012. The Check & Send service is offered at 2,500 Post
Office branches and sub branches and the Identity and Passport
Service is currently awaiting a proposal from the Post Office
to extend the network to up to 3,000 outlets.
The Post Office is the only high street provider
of the Check & Send service and around 55% of applications
to IPS are received via the service; representing an income to
the Post Office of around £20 million per year.
IPS does not pay the Post Office for offering
this service but a handling charge is levied by the Post Office
to recover their costs. The handling charge levied to customers
is currently £6.85 (reduced in December from £7.00 due
to VAT decrease).
Community policing
Although not the provision of a service, you
may wish to note (for information only) that some Neighbourhood
Policing teams might use their local Post Office as a place to
engage with their local community. Neighbourhood Policing teams
are expected to engage with the community using any and all means.
How they do that is a matter for the local teams and, if large
enough, some may use the local Post Office as a place to have
a chat or to place literature/posters/flyers. We do not know how
many teams use Post Offices, or how often, and we certainly cannot
give any kind of commitment that Post Offices would be used with
any regularity.
2. Is your Department exploring the provision
of any additional services through post offices?
Identity Cards for Foreign Nationals
Looking forward, UKBA is exploring the provision
of any additional services through Post Offices. The Identity
Cards for Foreign Nationals Programme is currently working with
the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency to utilise its framework
agreement to negotiate a potential use of Post Offices for biometric
enrolment of migrants applying for identity cards for foreign
nationals.
Initially, UKBA is looking to implement a pilot,
which is expected to run for between six to 12 months for
the Post Office to provide up to 20 locations around the
UK at which foreign nationals can attend to enrol their fingerprints
and facial photograph as part of the application for an identity
card. The Post Office would charge UKBA a fee for this service
and a fee to the customer.
This builds on the existing plans to use Post
Offices to enrol applicants for photo driving licences.
Provision of Front Office Services
IPS is currently consulting with the private
and wider public sector about the creation of an open competitive
market to deliver Assisted Application, Biometric Recording and
related services, for Passports and Identity Cards. These are
known as Front Office Services (FOS). The ambition is to offer
this service through a range of providers nationally from 2012.
This requirement is detailed in the Front Office Services prospectus
which can be found on the IPS website at
http://wwwJps.qov.uk/identitv/downloads/FrontOfficeServiceProsepectus.pdf.
We estimate the total value of providing this service to citizens
for the market is c. £200m/pa.
The long term aim is that, as we move to capturing
biometric information on individuals, we will offer this service
in high street locations rather than Government Offices. This
will make it significantly more convenient for customers to attend
in person and greatly reduce the set up cost therefore minimising
the overall cost of the service for citizens.
It is anticipated that:
— In the region of seven million customers
per annum will need to present themselves in person to record
their biometric information (fingerprints, digital photo &
signature) and that up to half of these customers may seek ah
assisted application service (similar to today's Check & Send
service offered by the Post Office).
— The FOS market will be in place from
late 2011 in order to support the strategic rollout of Identity
Cards and second biometric passports for British Citizens in 2012.
Following publication of the prospectus (see
above), IPS has met with 27 organisations (including six
industry bodies). 15 organisations including the Post Office,
have expressed interest in proceeding to the next phase of engagement.
Front Office Services present a significant
opportunity for the Post Office like the other high street providers.
But Assisted Application services are likely to supersede the
Check & Send service provided by the Post Office. So if the
Post Office does not become a provider of these wider services
it may lose the Check & Send business.
Identity Service provision
The Identity & Passport Service is committed
to working with the Royal Mail Group (including the Post Office)
on the potential opportunities for identity service provision
and is in the—process of arranging a joint workshop to explore
these in more detail. We believe there is scope for the Royal
Mail Group (particularly the Post Office) to become a "trusted
provider" of identity services (the provision of identity
verification services particularly for consumers and small businesses)
as the National Identity Service is developed over the few years.
This model has been successfully developed overseas with postal
providers such as Sweden.
3. What constraints are there on the expansion
of your use of post offices for providing government services?
There are no constraints on the expansion of
the use of Post Offices in providing these services provided a)
they can show they are able to provide the services effectively
and b) they are competitive compared to other businesses.
30 March 2009
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