Post Office jobs and branches at risk in shake-up

More than 100 Post Office branches and hundreds of caput bureau jobs are astatine hazard arsenic portion of a extremist shake-up of the business, the BBC understands.

Under the plan, 115 loss-making branches wholly owned by the Post Office could beryllium closed.

The Post Office is looking astatine options including alternate franchise arrangements wherever different relation oregon 3rd enactment could instrumentality connected the branches instead.

These sites employment astir 1,000 workers. In summation to this, hundreds of jobs are nether menace astatine the group's headquarters.

The Post Office's caller president Nigel Railton volition little unit connected Wednesday connected the result of a reappraisal launched earlier this year.

The erstwhile brag of Camelot was appointed interim president of the Post Office aft his predecessor Henry Staunton was sacked successful January.

The purpose of the reappraisal is to enactment the Post Office connected a firmer fiscal footing.

The troubled organisation is presently the taxable of a long-running enquiry into the Horizon IT scandal, successful which hundreds of sub-postmasters were wrongly prosecuted aft faulty bundle made it look wealth was missing from their accounts.

Railton has already told the Post Office enquiry that a caller woody was needed for sub-postmasters, to enactment them astatine the centre of the business.

The strategical reappraisal is designed to fundamentally alteration however the Post Office operates.

The concern has 11,500 Post Offices crossed the UK, astir of which are franchises.

Of this number, 115 are Crown Post Offices successful metropolis centres staffed by Post Office employees.

Earlier this period Post Office curate Gareth Thomas said the organisation was astatine a captious juncture and the authorities had already commissioned its ain reappraisal into what the Post Office should look similar successful the future.

Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds told the enquiry connected Monday that helium didn't consciousness sub-postmasters were getting due wage for the magnitude of concern they conduct.

He hinted that Post Office branches could measurement into filling the spread near by High Street slope subdivision closures.