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Changes needed but no cash to do it, says Consignia

Monday 25 February 2002 01:00 GMT
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The company which runs Britain's postal services needs to make radical changes but doesn't have the money to do it, its chairman said this morning.

"You can't have a business which is losing £1.5m a day, and which has just had its worst January on record and pretend that everything is fine – it is not," said Alan Leighton, chairman of Consignia PLC.

With the company under pressure, Leighton recently suggested that changing the name from Post Office to Consignia had been a mistake.

"Everything is up for review," Leighton said in a BBC radio interview.

"At the moment we haven't got any money to do anything, never mind change the name," he added.

"Changing the name isn't going to change anything, the most important thing to change ... is that the business has to be much more focused on customers and competition."

In January, the regulatory agency Postcomm ordered the full deregulation of the postal service by 2006.

As a first step, the government is allowing competition for bulk mail delivery, Consignia's most profitable business and 30 per cent of its market, worth £1.5bn a year.

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