Former Sorting Office on Herne Hill
The Sorting Office closed on 4 June 2007
Post not delivered to customers in SE24 will now be returned to the CAMBERWELL DELIVERY OFFICE at 41 Camberwell Station Road, London SE5 9JH.
You can either collect from this office, or you can telephone to arrange re-delivery on 08456 112443. For general customer information or questions call the Customer Service Centre on 08457 740740.
For background to the closure, see our Press Release. See also correspondence below.
Former Post Office
We have been monitoring this site since the proposals for its development were first submitted to Lambeth for planning approval at the end of 2005. We saw no reason to object to the proposal to build seven flats plus commercial space on the ground floor, either from the design or use point of view.
Sorting Office Campaign
The following Motion was being presented to the full council at Lambeth Town Hall on 28 February 2007 at 7:00pm.
This council notes with alarm Royal Mail's proposals to close the sorting office in Herne Hill and transfer the service to Camberwell Station Road.
The closure wil lnot simply represent the loss of a much-needed local amenity for the neighbourhood but will result in environmental damage - in the form of pollution and congestion - AS residents are forced to make extra journeys to the Camberwell sorting office to collect parcels and packets. Should residents wish in future to pick mail up locally they will be forced to pay extra and to queue at the local post office counter which is not suitable for this purpose.
It resolves to write to Royal Mail urging postponement of these proposals pending:
proper consultation with local residents and businesses with the opportunity for stakeholders to suggest alternative options including retention of the current office.
conduct of a full environmental Impact Survey of the proposed change.
The council also notes aspirations amongst residents and businesses that the buildings from 128-136 Herne Hill - including the sorting office site - should be joined with the Half Moon Lane conservation area in neighbouring LB Southwark. It instructs officers to add development of proposals for a Herne Hill conservation and Urban Design Team's work programme for 2007/2008.
Cllr Jim Dickson
Herne Hill ward
Executive Member Finance
Melanie Corfield
Head of External Relations
Royal Mail
148 Old Street
London
EC1V 9HQ
7 February 2007
Dear Ms Corfield
Correspondence about Herne Hill Delivery Ofice
I am writing to you again in your capacity of Head of External Relations to draw your attention to the confusing number of people apparently all dealing with the letters about the proposed closure of the Delivery Office in Herne Hill.
Many Herne Hill Society members have sent me copies of replies received when they wrote to Adam Crozier, your Chief Executive.
Replies have come from:
• Melanie Corfield
• Mandy Wombwell
• Martin Humphries
• Toby Thomas
• Claire Hancock
I am concerned that this matter appears to being dealt with by too many people, leading to possible confusion and inconsistency. It may explain why the Herne Hill Society, an important stakeholder in this matter, and on behalf of which I write as Chair, has still not been sent any substantive response to the concerns we put to you, since the letter from Mandy Wombwell dated 11th December 2006.
Please look into this matter, in the interests of efficiency and customer service.
Yours sincerely
Sheila Northover Chair
Sheila Northover
Chair
Herne Hill Society
PO Box 27845
London
SE24 9AX
6 February 2007
Dear Ms Northover
Thank you for your letter of February 1 about the planned move of the Herne Hill delivery office.
I can confirm that we do intend to go ahead with this move and our current plans are to do this in the summer of this year. As the plans progress I will be happy to keep you informed.
I am sorry that this is disappointing news for the Herne Hill Society. I fully acknowledge that some of our customers would prefer for arrangements to remain as they are but I can only underline the absolute necessity for Royal Mail to drive down costs in order to compete successfully in the now fully opened marketplace.
This will enable us to continue to provide an affordable and universal postal service for everyone. Competition is increasing - in the past few weeks alone. As you might be aware from recent media coverage, several large companies have switched multi million pound contracts to rival operators. This current financial year we expect competitors to handle one letter in seven. Competitors with lower operating costs are able to undercut Royal Mail on price and potentially take away very large amounts of business and we have to respond with more efficiency in our own operating costs, as well as with improvements to our quality of service, now at its highest ever levels.
We do understand that there will be some customers in Herne Hill who would prefer to continue calling at the delivery office in person and that the move might be inconvenient for some. But our alternative solutions, such as redelivery, have proved popular with many of our customers everywhere. Redeliveries can be made on Saturdays for people who are working during the week and do not want to arrange delivery to an alternative local address. We aim to offer as many alternatives to a personal visit as possible and, in addition to those outlined to you previously. These will now include online facilities for arranging redeliveries and paying excess postage. This facility will start being rolled out for customers across the country from later this month.
Our provision for the collection of mail and for redelivery options remains, as you point out, ahead of many of our competitors. Customer service is top priority for us and ensuring that our customers can receive their mail as easily as possible is crucially important. We continue to work with mail order and on line retailers and other companies with the aim of offering customers as wide a delivery choice as possible.
I hope that this reassures you that Royal Mail will continue to improve arrangements for customers who find it difficult to visit delivery offices and offers you further background about why we must make changes to thrive in the new marketplace.
I will let you have more details of the plans as they develop but please do not hesitate to contact me in the meantime if there is any additional information you would like.
Yours sincerely
Melanie Corfield
Head of External Relations
Royal Mail Group London and South East
Melanie Corfield
Head of External Relations
Royal Mail
148 Old Street
London
EC1V 9HQ
1 February 2007
Dear Ms Corfield
Herne Hill Delivery Office, London SE24
Once again I am writing to Royal Mail to ask for the closure of the Delivery Office in Herne Hill to be reconsidered. I write on behalf of the members of the Herne Hill Society, and also the wider community through the Herne Hill Forum, which reaches over 4,500 people.
The last letter I received on this matter was from Mandy Wombell on 11/12/06, but I have chosen to write to you as I have seen a copy of your more recent correspondence (04/01/07) with our MP Tessa Jowell, in which you state that you have firm plans for the move to Camberwell in June 2007. Ms Wombwell stated to me in early December that the decision about the planned move had not yet been made and that ‘we will be writing to elected representatives and other stakeholders….within the next few weeks’. This has not happened to date, assuming the Herne Hill Society is a stakeholder.
The main points I want to challenge are the alternative delivery plans, which are simply not viable in the case of Herne Hill today. Many people now shop on line and so there is an ongoing increase in parcel and packet deliveries; a local, convenient collection point is an essential, and at our present Delivery Office there are regular queues to collect parcels. It has been estimated that 500 parcels and packets a week are returned to await collection; at present, almost all of these are collected by people walking to the office.
The only Post Office alternative is now a small counter at the back of Costcutters in Norwood Road, and not the previous large Post Office building nearby. This small counter is barely coping with trade as it is, but would be swamped if people chose to pay the 50p and collect from their nearest post office. Many people will also object to having to pay the extra 50p when postage has already been paid, often by the recipient of the parcel in the case of mail order.
You also offer re-delivering to the same address at another time or to another address in the same post code: in this densely populated residential area many people are out at work all the time, so this is not possible to arrange, and in any case people prefer to be independent and not ask their neighbours to wait in for their parcels.
Another point in favour of retaining our local collection point is that the rival carriers are very unpopular with customers, as their pick-up points are many miles away on industrial estates.
Finally, the issue of customer service cannot be ignored. Surely your commitment on your website ‘to do the right thing for the communities we operate in’ cannot be dismissed by stating that there are commercial pressures in a competitive market.
So again I ask you to please listen to your customers, and retain the Delivery Office in Herne Hill.
Yours sincerely
Sheila Northover
Chair
Cc Tessa Jowell MP
Val Shawcross MLA
Councillor Jim Dickson, Lambeth
Councillor Nick Vineall, Southwark
Giles Gibson Chair, HHF
Tessa Jowell MP
House of Commons
London
SW1A 0AA
4 January 2007
Dear Ms Jowell
I promised when I wrote to you in December to let you know when we had finalised the details for the move of our Herne Hill delivery operation to our Camberwell office.
We do now have firm plans to proceed with this move and expect that this will take place in June.
I hope that my previous letter reassured you about the options we give to our customers as alternatives to visiting our delivery offices. As I explained, the move is to drive down costs and increase efficiency and we will be able to run our delivery operation for Herne Hill and Camberwell at considerably lower cost.
We accept that there are some who would prefer that we do not make this change but in order for Royal Mail to continue to be in a position to provide an affordable, universal service for all it is essential that we compete successfully in the now open marketplace and this means we must be more efficient.
The majority of visits to our delivery offices are to collect items that either need a signature, have a surcharge to be paid or are too large to deliver through the letter box. There are alternatives to a personal visit for all of these circumstances and we are planning to improve and expand these further
If there is any further information that you would like or you wish to discuss this change please do not hesitate to contact me.
Melanie Corfield
Head of External Relations
melanie.corfield@royalmail.com
by email
10 November 2006
Dear Tessa
Thank you for writing to Adam Crozier about the predicted closure of the Royal Mail Sorting Office in Herne Hill, in response to my letter to you recently. I am awaiting a reply from him, but in the meantime have more information. We have found out that the property company who bought land nearby (the old Post Office site at 134 Herne Hill), have been negotiating with Royal Mail to buy the current Sorting Office from them.
Royal Mail's position was apparently that they would be prepared to sell and move if another suitable site could be found nearby. As this is not forthcoming, they appear to have decided to sell and move to Camberwell, as we feared.
I find it hard to believe this can happen so easily and without any information being given to the public, and so would ask you please to support us in any way you can.
Thank you
Yours sincerely
Sheila Northover, Chair, Herne Hill Society
Tessa Jowell MP
House of Commons
London
SW1A 0AA
21 October 2006
Dear Tessa
I am writing on behalf of the Herne Hill Society to ask your help once again regarding the dismal prospect of the closure of the Royal Mail Sorting Office in Herne Hill.
You may remember in 1997 there was a similar plan to close this office and transfer it to the Camberwell branch. This was fiercely contested by a local campaign, and helped by your intervention, the residents of Herne Hill have benefited from the continuation of our local service since then.
For the last few months there have been rumours that the Sorting Office is to close and that the business would be carried on from Camberwell after April 2007. Despite this Society’s best efforts, we have not been able to get a reliable answer to find out the truth. We have been told the building has been sold, but the Land Registry is not showing this. We have been told that Sainsbury’s Local next door is interested in the land for expansion, but this has been denied by them.
I am asking therefore whether you are able to investigate this for us. As far as we are aware there has been no consultation, and we feel all the previous arguments for retaining the service in Herne Hill remain.
They are:
• the convenience of having a bus stop outside the door when collecting undelivered parcels and packets, in contrast to a two bus journey to the Camberwell Station Road office, which is then is a walk from the main road.
• the environmental advantages of the post being sorted locally and delivered on foot by postal workers, as opposed to vans from Camberwell adding to traffic and pollution, as well as time.
• the historic building which has stood on this site fronting on to Herne Hill itself for over one hundred years; it has a modern office building at the back with an entrance in Milkwood Road.
I hope you feel you can help, and look forward to hearing from you.
Yours sincerely
Sheila Northover, Chair, Herne Hill Society
