Business, Skills and Innovation CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by Action with Communities in Rural England

1. Action with Communities in Rural England (ACRE) is the national umbrella body of a network of local charities that operate at local level in support of rural communities across the country.

2. A universal regular postal service is essential to rural communities and businesses that have seen significant withdrawal of services over recent years.

3. It is also critical that should Royal Mail privatisation come about that any changes to service must be comprehensively rural proofed.

4. ACRE aims to promote a healthy, vibrant and sustainable rural community sector that is well connected to policy and decision-makers who play a part in delivering this aim.

5. ACRE welcomes the inquiry into Royal Mail Privatisation and the opportunity to submit evidence. We hope that the inquiry and the work that follows will help lead to a sustainable future for the universal postal service with no reduction in service for rural communities and even the most remote or more deprived areas.

6. Rural communities have experienced a continued reduction in many of their essential local services. The recession and the austerity measures introduced have caused rural businesses to close impacting negatively on service provision. Local authorities have centralized service delivery to save money and this has led to a further reduction in services as cuts to rural services have been made. Some rural settlements have seen complete withdrawal of services to their community as a result of these measures.

7. The Royal Mail provides an essential service to rural communities bringing social and economic benefits and helping to reduce exclusion amongst the most disadvantaged.

8. We recognise that as with many other forms of service delivery to rural communities, the cost of Royal Mail in rural areas can be more expensive. However, for communities and businesses to thrive in rural areas, a regular universal letter and parcel service is critical.

9. ACRE believes that despite the likely decline in the overall need and use of the letter service element of Royal Mail’s business model, it should be retained for those people that need and value this service. This is particularly important for communities that are socially isolated or rely on written forms of communication—there are still 16m people in the UK that are not IT literate and can be considered as digitally excluded in terms of skills. This does not include those who have limited broadband speeds or no connectivity at all.

10. There is high potential for expanding Royal Mail’s parcel services and we would suggest this is maximized as the significant business opportunity it represents.

11. We would also expect that the growth in Royal Mail’s parcel service will be used to cross subsidise the delivery of letters in rural areas for the reasons previously outlined.

12. Many rural businesses rely on a regular parcel service to communicate with customers to maintain their viability.

13. These businesses rely on parcel services or use of the nearest post office to drop off or collect their packages.

14. Clearly, there is a significant synergy between the Royal Mail and the Post Office Network; the challenges each experiences in providing an effective service to rural communities and businesses and the benefits both offer currently and in the future.

15. As ACRE has previously stated to the Government, we believe the current Post Office Network should be retained and where feasible increased to improve accessibility. This is because of the essential interface between government and the public/business they provide.

16. Despite the additional costs for providing Royal Mail’s services to rural communities, high quality and equitable access is an essential element of a sustainable rural community maximizing its economic potential.

17. ACRE expects that any planned changes to Royal Mail’s services are effectively rurally proofed by the relevant bodies in Government to ensure rural communities are not unfairly discriminated against.

Martin Hawkins
Policy Officer

12 August 2013