Royal Mails game changing parcel strategy : RM letter to Mark Baulch included

[Martin Walsh]

Royal Mail have recently wrote to the National Union laying out their new parcel strategy.

This involves removing parcels labelled 3 & 4 ( ie parcels above shoe box size ) from the core delivery and deliver these in the Afternoon up to 19:00 along with the LAT.

They want to automate the larger parcels in 3 RDC/parcel centres. One will be Warrington , one either NDC or Atherstone and one in the South.

The next parcel machines will have 400 selections.

The aim will be for all parcels branded 3&4 will be machined to the 302 Current LAT hubs.

By doing this , these parcels will by pass the inward mail centre and will only need to cross docked.

Royal Mail say they believe by taking it out of normal delivery , that they could reduce potentially from 60 thousand deliveries in the UK to 52 000.

By doing this they estimate that by collapsing 1 walk in every 6 , that one would become the late
Parcel duty/LAT. The remaining 5 could absorb the 6th duty
As they would no longer be delivering large parcels.

The impact is even worse in those delivery offices who are not part of the 302 LAT offices as you simply will not receive any parcels branded 3/4.

Royal Mail are proposing that they do not have to wait to the automation is up and running and proposing to trial in an LAT unit and collapse one walk in 6 and for that walk to become a PM driver and the 5 to absorb the 6th walk and if successful roll it out to other units and than nationally

Royal Mail have clearly changed their strategy that they only 5 year plan which make money by delivering letters and parcels together ie once up the garden path. This is game changing and is ahead of their 5 year plan which they will announce on their capital markets day in May.

Letter to Mark Baulch 29_01_19.pdf

[Acca Dacca]

How many LAT's in Wales currently?

[worktotime]

so what do they class as shoe box size ? so is this there new cunning 5 year plan then .

[worktotime]

Royal Mail have recently wrote to the National Union laying out their new parcel strategy.

This involves removing parcels labelled 3 & 4 ( ie parcels above shoe box size ) from the core delivery and deliver these in the Afternoon up to 19:00 along with the LAT.

They want to automate the larger parcels in 3 RDC/parcel centres. One will be Warrington , one either NDC or Atherstone and one in the South.

The next parcel machines will have 400 selections.

The aim will be for all parcels branded 3&4 will be machined to the 302 Current LAT hubs.

By doing this , these parcels will by pass the inward mail centre and will only need to cross docked.

Royal Mail say they believe by taking it out of normal delivery , that they could reduce potentially from 60 thousand deliveries in the UK to 52 000.

By doing this they estimate that by collapsing 1 walk in every 6 , that one would become the late
Parcel duty/LAT. The remaining 5 could absorb the 6th duty
As they would no longer be delivering large parcels.

The impact is even worse in those delivery offices who are not part of the 302 LAT offices as you simply will not receive any parcels branded 3/4.

Royal Mail are proposing that they do not have to wait to the automation is up and running and proposing to trial in an LAT unit and collapse one walk in 6 and for that walk to become a PM driver and the 5 to absorb the 6th walk and if successful roll it out to other units and than nationally

Royal Mail have clearly changed their strategy that they only 5 year plan which make money by delivering letters and parcels together ie once up the garden path. This is game changing and is ahead of their 5 year plan which they will announce on their capital markets day in May.

Dingo so does this only concern LAT units ? and not all delivery offices .

[Martin Walsh]

No it will concern all delivery offices but the 302 LAT units will sort the parcels for the whole catchment area which they currently do for the PM LAT parcels.

[oypostie]

They will need to take away a lot more than this to justify the time for an extra fifth of a walk. I agree with the idea of taking the large parcels away as carting around things like microwaves or flat pack cabinets was getting daft in the size of vans we have but the time saving nowhere near adds up

[Pathfinder]

Wow

[worktotime]

No it will concern all delivery offices but the 302 LAT units will sort the parcels for the whole catchment area which they currently do for the PM LAT parcels.

so the LAT units will sort these parcels and dispatch them to the delivery offices for delivery ? , so say we had in our office 30 duties (30 staff) in the office that would be reduced to 25 duties (25 staff) not inc floaters , so would that mean you would have 5 parcel drivers or would some of the staff inc floaters be surplus to requirements ? it just sounds like a ploy to get rid of staff and collapse deliverys on a massive scale .

[Martin Walsh]

No the LAT/ PM parcels will carry out the delivery of those parcels which is branded 3&4. The other delivery offices will lose this work all together.

Remember this is Royal Mail’s strategy and the CWU have not agreed it.

[DGH]

Collapsing one walk in six . . .

So every remaining walk would add 20% to its addresses. There's absolutely no way that packets above shoe box size account for 20% of the current work timewise. Maybe if you removed almost all packets that required a door knock, that'd do it.

It's not the huge packets that take the time (though they are annoying in a small van), it's the packets that are easy to handle but just too large for letterboxes that are the pain.

[worktotime]

No the LAT/ PM parcels will carry out the delivery of those parcels which is branded 3&4. The other delivery offices will lose this work all together.

Remember this is Royal Mail’s strategy and the CWU have not agreed it.

thanks dingo , s**t and that would mean massive job losses then , I cant see the CWU agreeing to this rubbish .

[Ren Hoëk]

We already have absorbed an entire walk and another when we lapse (Most days). Id say it would take very little out of the bags but reduce "biggies" to almost zero. If that would save enough time to absorb another entire walk I do not know. Especially if we are to lose another hour a week off of FT in October with an aim to get it to 35 hours, towns up and down the country are building houses like mad adding hundreds/thousands of houses to DO's and im sure Iv read that they would like collections to almost entirely take place out on delivery. I can see why RM would want to do this. It would make us more competitive and could lead to more customers. One would assume they must have figures that support it but I sure as hell have feet that say other wise.

[scoobymunster]

No the LAT/ PM parcels will carry out the delivery of those parcels which is branded 3&4. The other delivery offices will lose this work all together.

Remember this is Royal Mail’s strategy and the CWU have not agreed it.

Would this be nationally or is the Scottish Highlands/NI still exempt? Can't see this being viable considering bulk levels and how big an area we cover. Surprised Royal Mail would consider this idea instead of sending more "bulk" via ParcelForce. We're the same company, yet potentially 3 vans could be delivering to the same address? Christmas will be even more of a disaster.

[Tomolo208]

Hmmm. Its actually a plan, for once. Is it based on information collected from the PDA actuals I wonder.

If they can prove that the big parcels take 20% of your day on delivery then they are more than justified to take that work off you and add an extra 20%.

Plenty of time would be saved in our office from people walking around trying to find where each big packet goes in the morning.

Will be interesting to see how they allocate the increase in evening duties.

[citypostie]

No it will concern all delivery offices but the 302 LAT units will sort the parcels for the whole catchment area which they currently do for the PM LAT parcels.

So in an office with 60 walks, 10 would be collapsed and the rest lose their bigger parcels and then one parcel delivery created to deliver the bigger parcels and lats for all those deliveries therefore replacing 10 jobs with 1? If these parcel deliveries are expected to cover over sized plus lats for a large number of deliveries they will be hard work