Post Office Limited
Post Office Limited, formerly Post Office Counters Limited and commonly known as the Post Office, is a state-owned retail post office company in the United Kingdom that provides a wide range of postal and non-postal related products including postage stamps, banking, insurance, bureau de change and identity verification services to the public. It does this through its nationwide network of around 11,500 post office branches, which are run by franchise partners or by independent business people known as subpostmasters, under contracts with the Post Office.
Since 2020, a public enquiry has been under way into the company's actions which led to between 700 and 900 subpostmasters being wrongfully prosecuted for financial crimes, in what has been described by the Criminal Cases Review Commission as "the biggest single series of wrongful convictions in British legal history".
History
Post Office branches, along with the Royal Mail delivery service, were formerly part of the General Post Office and, after the passage of the Post Office Act 1969, the Post Office, a statutory corporation. Post Office Counters Limited was created as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Post Office in 1987. The first managing director of Post Office Counters was John Roberts, who took up the post in 1987. A former civil servant, Richard Dykes, took over as managing director of Post Office Counters in September 1993. Dykes was succeeded in May 1996 by Stuart Sweetman, who continued to serve in that role until his retirement in November 2001.As part of the Postal Services Act 2000, the Post Office statutory corporation was changed to a state-owned public limited company, Consignia plc, in 2001, although the name was unpopular and was changed to Royal Mail Group just a year later. Post Office Counters Limited became Post Office Limited and in 2002, David Mills was appointed as chief executive of the Post Office, a newly created role. Mills stepped down at the end of 2005. His successor, Alan Cook, was appointed with the title of managing director in January 2006. Cook had previously been chief executive of National Savings & Investments.
With declining mail usage, the Post Office had chronic losses, with a reported £102 million lost in 2006, raising concerns in the media regarding its ability as a company to operate efficiently. Minutes of a board meeting in April 2006 state that the company was insolvent and unable to meet its future debts. Plans to cut the £150m-a-year subsidy for rural post offices led to the announcement that 2,500 local post offices were to be closed during 2007.
In 2007, the government gave a £1.7 billion subsidy to Royal Mail Group so that it could turn a profit by 2011. This was to be used to invest across the whole network of Royal Mail, the Post Office, and Parcelforce. 85 Crown post offices were closed, 70 of which were sold to WHSmith. This followed a trial of 6 Post Office outlets in WHSmith stores. WHSmith was expected to make up to £2.5 million extra in annual profit. 2,500 sub-post offices closed between 2008 and 2009. Redundancy packages were provided from public funding.
In 2010, David Smith succeeded Alan Cook as managing director. Smith had previously been managing director of Parcelforce, another Royal Mail subsidiary. In November 2010, the government committed £1.34 billion of funding for 2011 to 2015 to the Post Office to enable it to modernise the Post Office network.
As part of the Postal Services Act 2011, the Post Office became independent of Royal Mail Group on 1 April 2012. A ten-year inter-business agreement was signed between Royal Mail and the Post Office to allow post offices to continue issuing stamps, and handling letters and parcels for Royal Mail. The Act also contained the option for the Post Office to become a mutual organisation in the future. In April 2012, Paula Vennells was appointed as chief executive; she had been with the Post Office since 2007 as the network director. The first chair of the board of the new company was Alice Perkins, who had for a time led human resources management in the Civil Service.
In February 2013, the Post Office announced it was planning to move around 70 of its Crown post offices into shops. This would reduce the Crown network, which it stated was losing £40 million a year, to around 300. In November 2013, the government committed an additional £640 million of funding for 2015 to 2018 to allow the Post Office to complete its network modernisation. In June 2015, the Post Office launched its own mobile virtual network operator service, Post Office Mobile. However, in August 2016 it decided "to conclude the trial as the results did not give us sufficient confidence that mobile will contribute to our goal of commercial sustainability".
Perkins stood down as chair in July 2015 and was replaced in October of that year by Tim Parker, a businessman who had led and restructured a number of companies. He at first worked one-and-a-half days a week, reducing to two days a month in November 2017. Speaking in 2024, Parker described a business in "deep crisis":
In January 2016, the Post Office announced plans to franchise 39 Crown branches and close 3 more. In April 2016, the Post Office agreed to hand over up to 61 more branches to WHSmith in a 10-year deal. The deal was condemned as "blatant back-door privatisation" by the Communications Workers Union. In January 2017, the Post Office announced it was to close and franchise another 37 Crown branches. In December 2017, the government agreed a £370 million funding deal for 2018 to 2021 to further modernise the Post Office network and protect rural branches. In June 2018, the Post Office agreed to acquire Payzone's UK bill payment business after it was split from Payzone Ireland, to expand its bill payment network. In October 2018, the Post Office announced that 74 more Crown branches would be franchised to WHSmith, including the 33 branches already operating in the company's stores under the 2016 agreement.
In February 2019, the Post Office announced that Vennells would leave her role as CEO to become chair of the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. It was subsequently confirmed that the new CEO would be Nick Read, who had held senior roles at several customer-facing businesses and had been CEO of the Nisa convenience store group. Read promoted "click and collect" services for retailers, alongside parcel drop-off services.
In February 2021, the Post Office agreed to sell its broadband and home phone services to Shell Energy and exit the telecoms market. The purchase price was around £80million, with around 500,000 customers transferring to the new provider.
Parker completed a second term as chair in September 2022. He was replaced in December by Henry Staunton, who had held senior board roles at a number of companies and had chaired WHSmith until June of that year. He was removed on 27 January 2024, following disagreements with the Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch on matters including the appointment of a new independent director.
In April 2024, CEO Read was "exonerated of all the misconduct allegations" in relation to claims made by a whistleblower, revealed in Parliament. This followed an investigation by an external barrister. Nigel Railton, previously CEO of Camelot UK, was appointed interim chair in May 2024 for a 12-month term. In September 2024, it was announced Read would step down as CEO and leave the Post Office in March 2025. He was replaced by Neil Brocklehurst as acting CEO, with the role being made permanent in April 2025. Railton was subsequently given a full three-year term as chair beginning in May 2025.
In November 2024, as part of a strategic review led by Railton, the Post Office announced it was considering the future of its Crown network, equating to up to 115 post office branches or around one per cent of the company's retail footprint. In April 2025, the Post Office confirmed plans to transfer its remaining 108 publicly facing Crown branches to franchises, with the franchising process being announced as complete in November 2025.
Services
As of March 2025 there were 11,683 post office branches across the United Kingdom. The majority of branches were agency branches, run either by franchise partners or by local subpostmasters. Of the remaining branches, 1,669 were outreach services – typically small, part-time branches, perhaps making use of a mobile van or a village hall – and 823 were 'drop and collect' branches, focussing on pre-paid parcels and bill payments. There were also 111 branches that were directly managed by the Post Office, including 3 not open to the general public.The Post Office rolled out the 'ParcelShop' scheme in summer 2019, allowing retail stores to accept Royal Mail Internet returns, in order to expand Post Office facilities.
In some villages an outreach service is provided in village halls or shops. There are also "mobile post offices" using converted vans which travel between rural areas.