POL00024074
POL00024074
Post Office Limited
Post Office Customer Support Centre
Finsbury Dials
20 Finsbury Street
London
EC2Y 9AQ
Alex Chisholm
Permanent Under-Secretary of State
Department for Business, Energy
& Industrial Strategy
1 Victoria Street
London, SW1H OET
8 January 2019
Dee ke,
This comes with my best wishes to you and colleagues at BEIS for a successful 2019 and is further
to your letter of 3 January.
Thank you for your comments on the positive progress Post Office is making, which underpins our
shared ambition to remove taxpayer subsidy beyond March 2021. I am grateful for Government's
ongoing support.
2019 will be another significant year given the negotiations for the next Phase of the Banking
Framework, contractual discussions with Bank of Ireland and Royal Mail, ongoing changes to our
systems and outcomes from the Group Litigation Order (GLO).
We operate a single portfolio of large change projects, which form the basis of our reporting to the
Board. As you know, our change funding comes from a combination of Post Office trading profit
and Government transformation funds. The GLO work draws on shared (scarce) resources from
this change budget; we have been transparent about these costs. I will ensure we make it clear
that the source of funds for GLO work is Post Office, not Government. When this was brought to
our attention in December we removed the £2.4m from our quarterly request. We will not include
GLO spend in future funding requests and will confirm this quarterly, agreeing the wording with
UKGI as requested.
Furthermore, to ensure that the distinction is absolute and consistent, I have asked Al Cameron,
CFOO, to arrange for £2.3m to be returned to BEIS: the GLO was listed in our earlier reporting and
we received funding from you of £2.3m for Q2.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
With hest.wishes.....
GRO.
Paula Vennells
Group Chief Executive
Post Office Limited is registered in England and Wales. Registered No. 2154540
Registered Office Finsbury Dials, 20 Finsbury Street, London, EC2Y 9AQ. PostOffice.co.uk
Post Office and the Post Office logo are registered trade marks of Post Office Limited c
POL-0020553