Interview John Roberts, chief executive, the Post Office

Nicholas Bannister
Guardian

Saturday November 4, 2000

A painting of the London to Chester mail coach in the 1870s hangs behind the desk of John Roberts, chief executive of the Post Office. On the shelf below it is a model of its modern counterpart, a Royal Mail train.

Mr Roberts, a history graduate, is proud of the Post Office's past. But the train makes the point that the Post Office is "a business looking forward". It is also a reminder of one of the more immediate problems awaiting his attention: what to do about the mail which is being delayed by Railtrack's decision to impose speed restrictions in parts of its network.

About 25% of mail is transported by train. "We are very dependent upon the railways and on running times. When moving mail from one end of the country to the other, an extra half hour makes a great difference to us. We will have to look at whether we have to transport more mail by road, which is not something we would not want to do."

The danger is that late trains will lead to late deliveries, which will damage the Post Office's reputation as it is enters a new age of competition.

Mr Roberts, 56, believes his lifetime career at the Post Office has prepared him well for the new age. He entered the civil service as a high flyer under the university entrant scheme. He was then offered two jobs, one in the Post Office and the other in the Ministry of Agriculture. If he went to the Post Office, he was told, his civil service career would be short-lived because the organisation was about to become a public corporation.

He was not deterred. He joined the Post Office, where his father, a career civil servant, had worked as a middle manager for six years. During his early days Mr Roberts worked for the chairman, Sir William Ryland, who was overseeing the change in its status to public corporation.

'How far we could push'

He also worked for Sir William's successor, Sir William Barlow, who had been brought in from heading the ball-bearings group Ransome Hoffman and Pollard. "This exposed me to the ways of private sector business," Mr Roberts said. "At the time we were preparing to split the Post Office from British Telecom.

"I was influenced by the private sector non-executive directors. We were trying to be as commercial as we could. We were seeing how far we could push the Post Office towards being a fully commercial organisation without actually being one."

When he took over as managing director of group services in 1993, Mr Roberts had specific responsibility to privatise the Post Office - a plan which collapsed largely as a result of public opposition.

"The 1990s were wasted years for the Post Office because of the privatisation debate. But now we have greater commercial freedom. We have been able to invest about £500m in companies, mainly in Europe. That has been a fundamental change which none of us would have foreseen."

The Post Office's immediate future, and its relationship with the government - its shareholder - has been set out formally in the Postal Services Act 2000. The Post Office gets greater commercial freedom and protection from cash-grabbing raids by the Treasury. But the price has been the appointment of a postal regulator.The government has departed from the usual model where the regulatory power is invested in an individual and set up a commission with a chairman, chief executive and five independent members.

Postal regulation is unknown ground and the commission is expected to flex its considerable powers, creating extra work for Post Office executives.

Yet Mr Roberts hopes he will be able to maintain his routine of starting work at 8am and finishing by 6pm. "I think it is very important to have a balance between what I do here and what I do outside. It is important for the family.

"I used to be told I was very competitive. I would hope to do a few more years here to see the Post Office through some of the changes we are going through. But there may well come a time when the Post Office needs a different kind of chief executive from a different background."

One ambition is to "really understand computers". He added:"I use the computer on my desk, especially for email, and I have a computer at home. Like many people in their 50s with a family, you get browbeaten into it."

He believes the Post Office will have a growing internet-linked business. For example, it wants to be the delivery channel of choice for e-tailers. But, he says, of all the Post Office's businesses, e-commerce is the hardest to predict. "Five years hence we will still see the mail business generating the bulk of the business, although somewhat reduced from today. The package business will have increased and counters will be holding its own.

"It is important to remember that only 0.6% of retail sales are via e-commerce. I think it will grow rapidly, but 100% of 0.6% is not a lot and we must not get carried away by the hype."

He is confident he can steer the Post Office through the most radical change in its history. The European commission is threatening to wipe out the bulk of its postal monopoly. The economic viability of its 18,500 outlets is threatened by the government's decision to pay benefits direct to bank accounts from 2003.

It is fighting to establish a universal bank for the financially excluded in a move which would replace some of the business lost by the benefits decision. But the big banks have been reluctant to become involved for fear they will end up footing the bill for what is, in effect, a piece of social policy. The British Bankers Association has said it would be shunned because it would have the "stigma" of being a poor people's bank.

Mr Roberts rejects that argument. "We have never seen this as a stigma. We have seen it as a service. We have always made people in the Post Office able to deal with every part of society. Our customer base mirrors the UK as a whole."

The recent Postal Services Act set in law that universal service obligation: to deliver mail to all the country's 27m addresses at a uniform and affordable price.

The legislation stipulates that big takeovers, which Mr Roberts feels may soon be necessary, must be cleared by government first. But the Post office has already embarked on new ventures, most notably the acquisition of foreign parcel companies such as German Parcels, and it is offering call centre and internet services to meet new demands.

'Impact on social mail'

The changes have not all been welcomed by the workforce. "We have too much unofficial industrial action and that knocks on into our service."

Mr Roberts admits to writing fewer personal letters than he used to. "I think it started 20 years ago when the phone started to be the way for families to communicate. The mobile phone is now having the biggest impact on social mail." On the other hand, his business correspondence has gone up by leaps and bounds.

A framed set of stamps sit on a book shelf in his office, a present from an American postal organisation. "Postal executives who travel abroad frequently exchange stamps. I have a bookcase full of stamp albums at home."

The boy stamp collector has come a long way.