News

The UK's largest postal union, CWU, calls new postal regulator Ofcom's proposals on regulation a "radical change" and welcomes the recognition of major failures in the previous approach. CWU broadly welcomes the proposals but holds reservations over the impact on price rises to consumers and believes changes to competitor access prices could have gone further.



The postal regulator, Ofcom, recognised that heavy regulation would prevent postal operators from operating a viable universal service obligation (USO).



Billy Hayes, CWU general secretary, said: "These appear to be major deregulatory steps from Ofcom and we broadly welcome this signal of a radically different approach to regulation which has finally been recognised as a failure.



"We do have reservations over the impact on consumers, and we'll be looking closely at the details of the proposals before making our submission to the consultation. The principle of a universal service with affordable and equal access to everyone is hugely important and we want to see it robustly maintained."



Dave Ward, CWU deputy general secretary, said: "It's positive to see the new regulator has taken on board the serious criticisms of previous regulatory failure. It was failures with regulation which put Royal Mail and the universal service at risk in the first place.



"It's significant that Ofcom has recognised that price controls have not been effective and we welcome the removal of price controls on bulk mail as this should allow Royal Mail to operate in a fairer competitive environment.



"While we welcome greater flexibility for Royal Mail to set prices - stamp prices have been held artificially low for many years - we do have concerns about affordability for consumers. We also feel that the proposals on access headroom prices for competitor mail does not go far enough, but we'll study this in more detail over the coming weeks."



CWU is the biggest trade union in the postal industry with over 200,000 members.