Royal Mail issues update over ‘reducing delivery days’

Royal Mail has issued a crucial update on whether the postal firm will keep its six day service. The postal service’s owner International Distribution Services agreed to a £3.57billion takeover offer from Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky’s EP Group in May.

In an interview with the BBC, Mr Kretinsky said he will honour Royal Mail’s Universal Service Obligation (USO) for as long as he is in charge. He said: “As long as I’m alive, I completely exclude this, and I’m sure that anybody that would be my successor would absolutely understand this.”

“I say this as an absolutely clear, unconditional commitment: Royal Mail is going to be the provider of Universal Service Obligation in the UK, I would say forever, as long as the service is going to be needed, and as long as we are going to be around.”

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Mr Kretinsky also said he would be willing to share profits with employees, if given the go-ahead to buy the group. However, he appeared to reject the idea of employees having a stake in Royal Mail, which unions have called for in exchange for their support.

He explained to the broadcaster: “The logic is: share of profit, yes, (but an) ownership structure creates a lot of complexity. For instance, what happens if the employee leaves? He has shares, he is leaving, he is not working for the company, he (still) needs remunerating.”

He further added that he would rather “remunerate the people who are working for the company, and creating value for the company”. Mr Kretinsky said that the postal unions “do understand that we are on the same ship, and that we need this ship to be successful, and that if we are there, we don’t have any real problems to deal with, because the sky is blue, and it’s blue for everybody.”

Dave Ward, general secretary of the Communication Workers Union (CWU), told the BBC: “I can’t think of any other country in the world that would just just hand over its entire postal service to an overseas equity investor.”