As previously reported by us, the loss of investment support from LDC saw Whistl (formerly TNT Post) announce that it would not be expanding its end-to-end delivery service that competed with Royal Mail. Now we learn that it is consulting with 2,000 of its workers on redundancy as it reviews its ability to continue with its service offering for the three locations it has been operating in. These are London, Manchester and Liverpool. Whilst we have not been able to confirm absolutely that the end to end service will be permanently suspended, this does appear to be the only option open to Whistl at this time. It is mooted that Whistl will now return to using Royal Mail for the “final mile” service provision for its customers and, as such, will no longer have a major point of difference in the competitive downstream access market.
A spokesman for the business said “Following the announcement from LDC that it would not proceed with the proposed investment to fund further rollout of E2E we have now commenced an extensive review of the viability and potential for the rollout of an E2E postal delivery service in the UK. To stem the losses from the operations we have taken the difficult decision to suspend the current E2E service during the review process and all mail will now be delivered through our long-standing downstream access service until we complete the review. As part of this extensive review, we will begin consultations with the relevant employees who are affected by the suspension of the E2E service, and with their union representatives, with a view to identifying and exploring viable proposals to secure the continuation of this service.”
Readers will recall that Royal Mail had argued that services like the end-to-end one operated by Whistl presented very unfair competition as profitable high density locations could be cherry picked, leaving Royal Mail to service every other UK address and be obliged to do so at the same single flat rate.
It is not known at this time how many head office staff at Whistl will be affected by these developments or how many of Whistl’s clients may now completely move their business back to Royal Mail.
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