oon there will be a bid from Tesco to purchase the Southend Mail Centre and build Royal Mail a smaller “Purpose Built” Delivery & Collection hub a short walk down Short Street.

It is evident from the plan above that the new Royal Mail site will be only one quarter the size from that of its current state.

Our current status is that of a “Mail Centre” which collects, sorts and delivers mail from both the posting customers of Southend and surrounding areas as well as of course our delivery customers.

The problem with the proposed purpose built building is that we will no longer be able to process [sort] the mail for onward transmission.

The new smaller building will be purpose built to Collect & Deliver only and not purpose built to process the work.
By definition, Royal Mail will use the bid from Tesco to considerably “downscale” our current operations and in doing gain huge savings from Estates.

Town Regeneration

This scenario would, without question, reduce the status of our Town for regeneration purposes.

Companies would not be attracted to a town where Royal Mail does not have a processing capability; indeed this may even drive business away.

Customers would lose the added benefit of being able to post later in the day, forcing them to post earlier to meet with the next day delivery.

On Today’s figures both business and social customers would suffer a worsening Quality Of Service to their posted 1st Class Mail should this work be transferred to Chelmsford, which is the current Royal Mail proposal.

Consultation Period

A meeting took place between Royal Mail management and the CWU at Southend Mail Centre at the end of July.

Some vague information was shared relating to Royal Mail’s projected effects on manpower as well as other statistical information relating to Chelmsford Mail Centre, Quality and volumes processed.

It was clearly evident that Royal Mail hadn’t given much thought on how to deal with the surplus workforce the potential downsize would create.

We explained that in any event our members expect their earnings to be maintained and of course that we believe that we have more to offer the business case than just a Delivery & Collection hub.

Their are currently 389 people working at Southend Mail Centre.

Royal Mail have told the CWU that they will need 42 VR’s after Inward and Outward work has transferred to Chelmsford.

We believe they will need in the region of a massive 180 VR’s as a Delivery and Collection unit would require a little more than 200 employees to cover the Southend area.

Royal Mail have also told us that they want to move both Inward and Outward work to Chelmsford Mail Centre at no cost. Meaning their would be absolutely no option for jobs to transfer to Chelmsford from Southend.

Chelmsford management are already in the process of managing a head count reduction offering 40 VR’s to employees.
The Chelmsford job reduction is due to the implementation of a new Flat Sorting Machine.

Further to this Chelmsford is also going to get a new IMP with the capacity to handle Southend’s work that will be installed before Christmas.

What Next?

Royal Mail has agreed to commit to setting up a "Project Board" and "Working Group".

To date we have no announced "Board". We also have no Royal Mail nominated members to the "Working Group".

This is not a surprise, of late Royal Mail has been using this tactic up and down the country.

Royal Mail also committed to a consultation process to take place during the Month of August with a "decision" made with Tesco in September 2008.

Against the above background we are insisting that no decision is made with Tesco until the CWU have presented the Royal Mail board with our findings; to do otherwise would make the consultation process futile.

This however gives the CWU a very short timescale to highlight to Royal Mail that their plans to dispose of our building and provide us with a “Purpose built Delivery & Collection hub” is floored.

We must be mindful that timescales are short and that we must submit a comprehensive case that allows us to continue to thrive as a high quality “Processing, Delivery & Collection” Office.

Rather than downscaling the Postal Services in Southend, Royal Mail should invest some of the money received from the sale of our building/land and invest in a genuinely “purpose built” building that will house our current full compliment of Collection, Processing and Delivery.

This will ensure that Southend town remains able to compete for business and re-generation, on an equal basis, to that of comparable surrounding towns.

Be assured your Representatives are now fully engaged in gathering data and will leave no stone unturned in pursuance of maximizing full time employment and of course securing and maintaining your earnings expectations.