The mail or post is a system for physically transporting postcards, letters, and parcels. A postal service can be private or public, though many governments place restrictions on private systems. Since the mid-19th century, national postal systems have generally been established as a government monopoly, with a fee on the article prepaid. Proof of payment is usually in the form of an adhesive postage stamp, but a postage meter is also used for bulk mailing. With the advent of email, the retronym "snail mail" was coined.
Royal Mail Group plc is a British multinational postal service and courier company, originally established in 1516 as a government department. The company's subsidiary Royal Mail Group Limited operates the brands Royal Mail and Parcelforce Worldwide (parcels). GLS Group, an international logistics company, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Royal Mail Group. The group used the name Consignia for a brief period in the early 2000s.
The Communication Workers Union (CWU) is the main trade union in the United Kingdom for people working for telephone, cable, digital subscriber line (DSL) and postal delivery companies. It has 110,000 members in Royal Mail as well as more in many other communication companies.
The Office of Communications, commonly known as Ofcom, is the government-approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries of the United Kingdom.
The postal counties of the United Kingdom, now known as former postal counties, were postal subdivisions in routine use by the Royal Mail until 1996. The purpose of the postal county – as opposed to any other kind of county – was to aid the sorting of mail by differentiating between like-sounding post towns. Since 1996 this has been done by using the outward code of the postcode instead. For operational reasons the former postal counties, although broadly based on the counties of the United Kingdom, did not match up with their boundaries: in some cases there were significant differences. The boundaries changed over time as post towns were created or amended.
The Postcode Address File (PAF) is a database that contains all known "Delivery Points" and postcodes in the United Kingdom. The PAF is a collection of over 29 million Royal Mail postal addresses and 1.8 million postcodes. It is available in a variety of formats including FTP download and compact disc, and was previously available as Digital Audio Tape. As owner of the PAF, Royal Mail is required by section 116 of the Postal Services Act 2000 to maintain the data and make it available on reasonable terms. A charge is made for lookup services or wholesale supply of PAF data. Charges are regulated by Ofcom. It includes Small User Residential, Small User Organisation and Large User Organisation details. There have been requests as part of the Open Data campaign for the PAF to be released by the government free of charge.
Post Office Ltd is a retail post office company in the United Kingdom that provides a wide range of products including postage stamps and banking to the public through its nationwide network of post office branches.
The Communications Act 2003 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The act, which came into force on 25 July 2003, superseded the Telecommunications Act 1984. The new act was the responsibility of Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell. It consolidated the telecommunication and broadcasting regulators in the UK, introducing the Office of Communications (Ofcom) as the new industry regulator. On 28 December 2003 Ofcom gained its full regulatory powers, inheriting the duties of the Office of Telecommunications (Oftel). Among other measures, the act introduced legal recognition of community radio and paved the way for full-time community radio services in the UK, as well as controversially lifting many restrictions on cross-media ownership. It also made it illegal to use other people's Wi-Fi broadband connections without their permission. In addition, the legislation also allowed for the first time non-European entities to wholly own a British television company.
There are several different types of mass media in the United Kingdom: television, radio, newspapers, magazines and websites. The United Kingdom is known for its large music industry, along with its new and upcoming artists. The country also has a large broadcasting and film industry.
Norman Roy Blackwell, Baron Blackwell is a British former businessman, public servant, Conservative politician, campaigner and policy advisor.
UK Mail, a trading name of DHL Parcel UK Limited and formerly known as Business Post, is a postal service company operating in the United Kingdom, which has competed with Royal Mail in collection and distribution of mail, since the deregulation of the postal service in January 2006. Its distribution network delivers mail to local Royal Mail sorting offices for last mile delivery through downstream access.
The Postal Services Act 2000 (c.26) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, relating to the postal industry. It established an industry regulator, Postcomm (s.1), a consumer watchdog, Postwatch (s.2), required a "universal service" of post to be provided (ss.3-4) and set up rules for licensing postal services operators (ss.6-41). It also converted the public branch of the postal industry, the Post Office, from a statutory corporation to a public limited company, wholly owned by the government.
United Kingdom enterprise law concerns the ownership and regulation of organisations producing goods and services in the UK, European and international economy. Private enterprises are usually incorporated under the Companies Act 2006, regulated by company law, competition law, and insolvency law, while almost one third of the workforce and half of the UK economy is in enterprises subject to special regulation. Enterprise law mediates the rights and duties of investors, workers, consumers and the public to ensure efficient production, and deliver services that UK and international law sees as universal human rights. Labour, company, competition and insolvency law create general rights for stakeholders, and set a basic framework for enterprise governance, but rules of governance, competition and insolvency are altered in specific enterprises to uphold the public interest, as well as civil and social rights. Universities and schools have traditionally been publicly established, and socially regulated, to ensure universal education. The National Health Service was set up in 1946 to provide everyone with free health care, regardless of class or income, paid for by progressive taxation. The UK government controls monetary policy and regulates private banking through the publicly owned Bank of England, to complement its fiscal policy. Taxation and spending composes nearly half of total economic activity, but this has diminished since 1979.
Postal services in the United Kingdom are provided predominantly by the Royal Mail. Since 2006, the market has been fully opened to competition which has had greater success in business-to-business delivery than in ordinary letter delivery.
The Green Paper on Postal Reform was a United Kingdom government draft plan to privatise and regulate the UK postal services. It set out various options, the key points of the plan being,
The New National Consumer Council, operating as Consumer Futures, was a non-departmental public body and statutory consumer organisation in England, Wales, Scotland, and, for postal services, Northern Ireland. It was established by the Consumers, Estate Agents and Redress Act 2007, and began operations in 2008 by the merging of Postwatch, Energywatch and the Welsh, Scottish and National Consumer Councils under the Consumer Focus brand.
The General Post Office (GPO) was the state postal system and telecommunications carrier of the United Kingdom until 1969. Before the Acts of Union 1707, it was the postal system of the Kingdom of England, established by Charles II in 1660. Similar General Post Offices were established across the British Empire. In 1969 the GPO was abolished and the assets transferred to The Post Office, changing it from a Department of State to a statutory corporation. In 1980, the telecommunications and postal sides were split prior to British Telecommunications' conversion into a totally separate publicly owned corporation the following year as a result of the British Telecommunications Act 1981. For the more recent history of the postal system in the United Kingdom, see the articles Royal Mail and Post Office Ltd.
The British media company Sky UK has incurred criticism over the years, much of it centred on overcharging, anti-competitive practices, and the business practices and undue political influence of its one-time majority owner News Corporation.
The Postal Services Act 2011 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The Act enabled the British Government to sell shares in Royal Mail to private investors and includes the possible mutualisation of the Post Office.
Richard Hooper CBE is a former UK civil servant. He was Deputy Chairman of OFCOM between 2002 and 2005.
