West Midlands businesses look for alternatives to Royal Mail
Katie Teasdale, senior policy adviser at Birmingham Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said: “Businesses don’t rely on Royal Mail the way they did in the past. Historically it doesn’t have a particularly high reputation, and people have moved to private services – so many people invoice by email now.
"Certainly a very significant proportion will be affected. You need reliability and you need stability with something like this – it should be so easy, so why would people tolerate something like the strikes?”
Small businesses are expected to be the worst-hit by any industrial action. Many do not use the mail on a scale that would let them switch to an alternative deliverer.
Lee Kent, managing director of Digbeth-based Full Range Films, said his firm would have to take on couriers to make deliveries if the Royal Mail could not be relied on.
He said: “It’s quite crucial for us, to be honest, and it’s going to cost us. We are not quite working on that kind of scale to go to the alternatives.”
According to the Federation of Small Businesses, 70 per cent of the 4.8 million small firms in the UK rely on the Royal Mail for their post. The federation added that on average every postal strike costs their members, who have up to 20 staff, £300 each.
Denise Craig, policy manager for the FSB in the West Midlands, said: “Our members are very angry about the postal strike and feel they are being held to ransom. In the current economic climate they are doing everything they can to keep their businesses going. Those who employ staff have spoken highly of the flexible attitude of their workforce in responding to difficult trading environment.
"They cannot understand the justification for this industrial action and ask that everything is done to avoid the stoppages. We surveyed our members at the end of last week and 70 per cent said they rely on Royal Mail for more than half of their business post and that they would lose money as a direct result of the strike. Of those businesses that can, half of them are considering leaving the Royal Mail.
"But, for many others, using alternative carries was not an option – 47 per cent said their volumes are not sufficient to make it economically viable and a third said they would not be able to meet their business needs.”
