As many as 2,000 Whistl employees in the UK are facing the threat of redundancy, after the company took the decision to suspend its final mile delivery service.
Whistl, previously known as TNT Post, said it had made the “difficult decision” to suspend the service in London, Manchester and Liverpool, after potential investment partner LDC, a branch of Lloyds Banking Group, decided against funding the company’s expansion plans, late last month.
The operator said: “Following the announcement from LDC that it would not proceed with the proposed investment to fund further rollout of E2E (end-to-end) we have now commenced an extensive review of the viability and potential for the rollout of an E2E postal delivery service in the UK.”
It added that as part of that review, it “will begin consultations with the relevant employees who are affected by the suspension of the E2E service, and with their union representatives, with a view to identifying and exploring viable proposals to secure the continuation of this service”.
Whistl’s core business of collecting and sorting mail is unaffected by the suspension. To put that into context, Whistl handles more than 80 million items of mail a week – three million were delivered by their own posties.
A Whistl spokesman added that the workers therefore under threat of redundancy are drivers/delivery people etc within its specific final mile (end-to-end) operation. They remain separate to Whistl's core staff of around 1,500 UK employees, which are not affected.
Whistl, which made a £8.1m loss for the financial year ending 31 December 2013, will now pay Royal Mail to handle its final mile delivery needs in the affected areas it previously handled directly.
Last year, Whistl filed a complaint about Royal Mail’s proposed fee increases for final mile delivery, which sparked an Ofcom investigation - currently ongoing - into claims that it had breached the Competition Act.
