The Post Office Plans An Onslaught On BT

If you think that the Post Office is just a place to buy stamps or pick up a form to renew your passports, you haven’t been in there in a while.

From the array of financial services now on offer you could be forgiven for thinking that the Post Office has turned into a bank, and with the launch of its new telephone landline service last week, it is assuming the role of a utility provider too.

It is only a little over two decades since the Post Office lost control of the bulk of the supply of phone services in Britain, when Margaret Thatcher split telecoms off from the high street and mail side of the business in 1981, and subsequently privatized the newly named British Telecom. Now the Post Office has returned to the telecoms market with its Homephone service, which it says it hopes will take a million of BT’s 21 million customers over the next three years, by undercutting its charges by up to 20 per cent.

As the controversy rages over branch closures – and there are more on the way – the Post Office, which is seen as being at the forefront in providing financial services for the ‘unbanked’, is pulling out all the stops to find a new role. Spokesman Jonathan Kinsella says: ‘The end of direct payments for pensions and benefits has seen a 40 per cent reduction in business, and we are having to find ways to come to terms with this. It has meant closing smaller and uneconomic outlets in order to provide a means for others to survive. In future we will see fewer branches doing more things.’