Postal Services In Scotland

Written evidence from International Flower Essence Repertoire

Royal Mail & Parcel Force Services in Rural & Remote Areas of Scotland

In 2003 I relocated my business from Hampshire to the Isle of Gigha. This was not without its challenges and costs, but one of the key elements which enabled me to make the move was the existence of the daily services of the Royal Mail and Parcel Force on the island. The simple fact is that if these services were to be curtailed, I would have to relocate my business to the mainland.

Ours is primarily a mail-order business, though we also provide our goods to shops across the UK. For example two days ago we dispatched 120 bottles of our flower essence sprays to Helios Homeopathic Pharmacy in Tunbridge Wells by Parcel Force. There is no cost-effective alternative for getting such a box from our island to Kent. For all other couriers we have to take the box over to the mainland ourselves,. Whereas with Parcel Force we simply drop the box at our local Gigha Post Office. We incur no price penalty for our island location. But for all other couriers in effect our added costs are such that we virtually never make use of them.

Even for our export sales (which have grown by over 30% per annum over the past two years) are primarily dispatched via Parcel Force, as well as the Royal Mail.

We are in the midst of sending out our annual mailshot, which currently goes out to 18,000 customers across the UK and Europe. We keep our local Post Office busy, although the Royal Mail doesn’t know this. The Royal Mail decided to have a specific item-count during one week in September this year, amongst the various west-coast island Post Offices. But that week was not one of our busier weeks, whereas during the past fortnight we have dispatched in excess of 9,000 envelopes 2nd Class (franked) via the Gigha PO. Although our entire mailshot is handled by the Royal Mail, and departs Gigha via our local Post Office, yet the Royal Mail has no means it appears of recognizing that this volume is actually going out via our local PO.

Personally, I doubt the Royal Mail’s own statistics on mail volume. The idea that email has led to a decrease in letters may be true, but web shopping has led to a massive increase in posted small parcels. We typically send out over 12,000 small parcels a year from our small island base, and 96% of these are sent via the Royal Mail, while 4% are dispatched with Parcel Force but this via our local rural island PO. A very few larger shipments are exported using other couriers, such as a pallet-load of 800 bottles of our sprays which is currently awaiting uplifting from Tayinloan to make its way to our Distributor in Canada. But these exceptions are very few, compared with the daily use we make of the Royal Mail and Parcel Force services.

7 November 2010