Future of Royal Mail Emergency Motion

I am currently at the Labour 2009 conference in Brighton and I will be speaking at the Future of Royal Mail Emergency motion today to discuss the issues faced by the business.

I will be calling on the government to start cross party talks with the Royal Mail and the CWU Union to discuss the future of the Royal Mail and try to resolve the problems that they currently face including that of pensions and recent industrial action.

I have been made aware that the motion will be televised on BBC Parliament (Channel 504 on Sky) in the UK at around 3:45PM today.

Update:

Unfortunately I did not get to speak due to time constraints but I am very happy with motion being passed unanimously at conference. It is all very good news for postal workers throughout the country

Lack of Information = Lack of Voters

I’ve been looking at the recent Borough Council election results, which show a significant drop in turnout from the last comparable election in 2003, which was also an ‘electronic’ election. In 2005 overall turnout was 54.5%, but in 2007 it has slumped to 42.6%. With the choice of voting methods on offer this is a worrying drop, and anyone who cares about local democracy should be concerned.

What were the reasons for this fall in voter participation?

The failure to deliver polling cards to many electors undoubtedly had an effect, and we are still waiting for an explanation as to exactly why that failure happened.

But, in my view, there are deeper seated reasons for this worrying trend. During the election I spoke to a large number of residents on the doorstep across the town, and time after time what came over was the frustration of local people with the lack of hard information about vital local issues.

What is really going on with the Sports Village construction contract?
How many actual real houses for low cost rent have been built by the Borough Council since the sale of the SABC housing stock?

What are the financial details (referred to by Daniel Kawczynski in the Westminster Hall Debate of 21 March 2007) of the “brilliant two-tier scheme that will save the Government a more money than the unitary bid proposals”?

I was unable to answer-either the information has been declared exempt and not for public disclosure by the Borough Council leaders, or they have been unable to provide any concrete details despite many requests for them. In the case of the unitary debate, because of the judicial review application, Borough Councillors are not even currently permitted to discuss the matter.

Local people currently are feeling very let down by the standard of debate in Shrewsbury & Atcham.

It is not surprising that lacking the hard information necessary to make any sort of informed decision, local people are apparently becoming more apathetic about elections.

A good start to repair this situation would be to provide the visitor projections and anticipated financial benefits for the Darwin visitor attraction on the Mount.

I see from the Chronicle article on May 17th that applications to the funding bodies for grant aid of £4m have been made for the project. Therefore surely these figures, which I have asked for several times, must now be available.
Why can’t the public have them?

Postal Update

It has been a very busy couple of weeks with the campaign to save the post office on St Mary’s Street.

Councillor Alan Townsend and I have been campaigning outside of the post office most days and have obtained well over 13,000 signatures on our petition and handed out over 6,000 campaign letters.

We held a campaign march on Saturday 29 July 2006 which left from the Music Hall building and finished half way up Pride Hill where Steve Charlton and myself made a speech about the campaign.

We had plenty of press coverage and the event was filmed by a local campaign website that has been set-up by two post office customers who are against the plan to move the post office.

Here is a link to their site and blog where they have been adding pictures and news about the campaign.

After many people asking if there was a way to sign the petition on-line, they started one here under my name (so not to confuse things) with my approval to complement the petition I am campaigning with on St Mary’s Street.

The march went well and people were eager to join in with the few hundred supporters that had come out to support the campaign.

The MP for Shrewsbury and I are trying to arrange a meeting with Alan Leighton with little success but we are determined to arrange a meeting before the Post Office deadline for feedback to discuss the plans and to hand him our letters of support, petition signatures and to show him the strong community feeling against the move.

Postal Problems

You may have seen in the local media and on community websites that The Royal Mail wants to move the Shrewsbury branch office (aka The General”) from St Mary’s Street to the bottom floor, the basement in fact, of the nearby branch of WHSmith newsagents as part of a pilot scheme to reduce losses from the counters part of the business.

As well as Shrewsbury, 5 other post office branches are being closed down and moved with the exception of Llanelli which is going to be closed and not relocated.

The six sites are:

# The Kingsway, Swansea
# St Mary’s St, Shrewsbury
# Observatory, Slough
# Warrington St, Ashton-Under-Lyne
# The Broadway, Centre Hammersmith
# John St, Llanelli.

As both a councillor and a CWU representative, it is my duty to represent the interests of the public (customers) and the post office workers at the branch who will be affected by the job loss caused by the move.

Nationally the CWU have expressed concern over the relocation of the six post offices and are lobbying Royal Mail to think again about the relocation plans.

I am part of a local campaign against the move of our branch on St Mary’s Street and the campaign has recently been covered by The Shrewsbury Chronicle, Shropshire Star and I have spoken on BBC Radio Shropshire about the move and my concerns towards it.

I have organised a petition and information posters outside of the branch on St Mary’s Street and have obtained 3,000 signatures of customers that do not wish for the office to be moved.

I am still collecting signatures and informing the public of the issue and how they can be part of stopping this move from happening.

It is very important that the public get involved in this because it affects them and the services that they deserve and have come to expect from the main post office on St Mary’s Street.

It is clear from the responses that people have given to the news of the planned relocation that the move is not a popular one but we have an opportunity to be heard and to let the CWU and Royal Mail bosses know your views on the move and hopefully play a part in stopping this kind of money saving tactic being applied further throughout the business.

PostWatch was consulted about the plan to relocate the six post offices and I was shocked when I read their response in the Royal Mail Proposal sent to me as a representative of local government relating to Shrewsbury.

” As part of the code of practice, PostWatch have recognised that the decision to transfer a post office branch to a franchise partner is a commercial decision to be taken solely by Post Office Ltd and is, therefore, not subject to public debate or consent. However it is important to us that our customers and local community representative like yourself understand the rationale behind our decision and you will have the opportunity to comment on the facilities which will be available at the local branch.”

This shocked me because PostWatch is an independent organisation put in place to make sure that companies within the postal market are safeguarding the quality of services offered and the rights of their customers so to not get involved when Royal Mail (a company they are supposed to oversee) makes a decision that will have a negative impact on the public (the customers) who use the branch at St Mary’s Street is in my view is PostWatch not standing up for the people they are meant to represent.

I cannot blame Royal Mail for wanting to save money or become more efficient in order to improve their services and offer better job security but what I don’t understand is that why Shrewsbury would be targeted because our branch office on St Mary’s Street is making money and in fact is quite profitable.

I have more information on the plans including an artists impression of the floor plan which raises a few issues in itself.

If you want to get involved in the campaign then leave a comment on here or contact me directly and I can certainly help you out.