Performance
and Innovation Unit Report - Counter Revolution - Modernising the Post Office
Network
In October 1999 the Prime Minister asked the Performance and Innovation Unit ("PIU") (now known as the Strategy Unit) to draw up a strategy for the future of the post office network. The PIU unit was set up in July 1998 to provide the Government with a capacity to analyse major cross-cutting and strategic policy issues and to design solutions to problems.
For this report they were specifically asked to look ahead and pinpoint the challenges facing Britain's network of post offices. The trend towards a cashless society, including the payments of benefits into bank accounts, as well as the increased use of direct debit and e-mail meant the traditional work of the post office needed to change and respond to the service requirements of an ever-changing market.
The PIU Report was published in June 2000 and set out 24 proposals and measures to modernise the network, to protect the rural network in particular and to maintain convenient access and improve the quality of urban post offices. The conclusions of the report set out a programme of action both for Government and Post Office Limited. The Government accepted all the recommendations made within the report and remains confident that by working together with sub-postmasters and the private sector that we can deliver a network of post offices fit for the 21st Century.
£480 million was made available for the counters' automation project and £270 million was set aside for the purpose of beginning the implementation of the PIU report. The £480 million helped provide for the installation of new automated terminals in post offices. The first sums of the £270 million were paid to the network in respect of the Your Guide service pilot for post offices as Government General Practitioners.
In line with recommendations in the report, Postcomm, informed by Postwatch, reports annually to the Government on the shape of both the rural and urban networks and developments affecting them. Any such reports can be found on the Postcomm website.
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The Your Guide pilot
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® Performance and Innovation Unit Report -
Counter Revolution
- Modernising the Post Office Network - Report 
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Related
website links
® Postcomm -
http://www.postcomm.gov.uk/Index.html
® Strategy Unit - http://www.strategy.gov.uk