De-risk multi-floor working’.
Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2011 1:28 am
For more than 50 years, postmen have trooped up to the first floor of a sorting office to collect their mail before heading off on their rounds.
Yet bosses have now put the building up for sale after apparently deciding it is too dangerous for staff to use the stairs.
Or to quote the management-speak used to justify the decision, they want to ‘de-risk multi-floor working’.
All 13 posties will have to relocate from the handsome Grade II listed building in Chatteris, Cambridgeshire, to new premises 15 miles away in the town of March.
Royal Mail denies accusations of ‘health and safety gone mad’, saying it is ‘nonsense’ to link the move with the stairs.
But town councillor Chris Howe, 50, who was at a planning meeting attended by two senior Royal Mail managers last week, insisted his version of events was correct.
‘They explained one reason for the move was the need, and I quote, to “de-risk multi-floor working”,’ he said.
‘I write down things and check them, as I did in this case. I swear blind that they said it.’
He added: ‘I don’t understand what risk there can be of a postman walking upstairs.
‘If it’s a risk at their place of work it’s going to be a risk for postmen to deliver letters to upstairs flats. But they didn’t give me an answer to that.’
Thousands of householders have signed a petition attacking the decision, which will mean long journeys for them to pick up undelivered mail.
They include Ronald Micklethwaite, 84, who said: ‘I can’t understand the mentality of it.
‘There’s so many people like us who are elderly or work full-time who will find it an inconvenience to travel to March.
‘There are very few buses here and no train station, so if people don’t have their own car they are going to find it very difficult.’
Royal Mail, which has been raising prices and slashing services in recent years to stay profitable, said there would be no compulsory redundancies in Chatteris and staff would be reimbursed for any extra mileage.
A spokesman said: ‘Any suggestion that the relocation is down to “health and safety reasons relating to stairs” is nonsense.
‘The move is purely for business and operational reasons. With 1,000 new homes due to be built in the vicinity, these changes will enable us to better serve our customers.’
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