Post Office Limited

Post Office Limited, formerly Post Office Counters Limited and commonly known as the Post Office, is a state-owned retail post office company in the United Kingdom that provides a wide range of postal and non-postal related products including postage stamps, banking, insurance, bureau de change and identity verification services to the public through its nationwide network of around 11,500 branches. Most of these branch post offices (c. 99%) are run by franchise partners or by independent business people known as subpostmasters; Post Office Limited directly manages the remaining 1%, known as Crown post offices.

Since 2020, a public enquiry has been under way into the company's actions which led to between 700 and 900 subpostmasters being wrongfully prosecuted for financial crimes, in what has been described by the Criminal Cases Review Commission as "the biggest single series of wrongful convictions in British legal history".

Post Office branches, along with the Royal Mail delivery service, were formerly part of the General Post Office and, after the passage of the Post Office Act 1969, the Post Office, a statutory corporation. Post Office Counters Limited was created as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Post Office in 1987. The first managing director of Post Office Counters was John Roberts, who took up the post in 1987. A former civil servant, Richard Dykes, took over as managing director of Post Office Counters in September 1993. Dykes was succeeded in May 1996 by Stuart Sweetman, who continued to serve in that role until his retirement in November 2001.

As part of the Postal Services Act 2000, the Post Office statutory corporation was changed to a state-owned public limited company, Consignia plc, in 2001, and Post Office Counters Limited became Post Office Limited. In 2002, David Mills was appointed as chief executive of Post Office Limited, a newly created role. Mills stepped down at the end of 2005. His successor, Alan Cook, was appointed with the title of managing director in January 2006. Cook had previously been chief executive of National Savings & Investments.

With declining mail usage, Post Office Limited had chronic losses, with a reported £102 million lost in 2006, raising concerns in the media regarding its ability as a company to operate efficiently. Minutes of a board meeting in April 2006 state that the company was insolvent and unable to meet its future debts. Plans to cut the £150m-a-year subsidy for rural post offices led to the announcement that 2,500 local post offices were to be closed during 2007.

In 2007, the government gave a £1.7 billion subsidy to Royal Mail Group so that it could turn a profit by 2011. This was to be used to invest across the whole network of Royal Mail, Post Office Limited, and Parcelforce. 85 Crown post offices were closed, 70 of which were sold to WHSmith. This followed a trial of 6 Post Office outlets in WHSmith stores. WHSmith was expected to make up to £2.5 million extra in annual profit. 2,500 sub-post offices closed between 2008 and 2009. Redundancy packages were provided from public funding (subpostmasters were paid over 20 months salary, roughly £65,000 each).

In 2010, David Smith succeeded Alan Cook as managing director. Smith had previously been managing director of Parcelforce, another Royal Mail subsidiary. In November 2010, the government committed £1.34 billion of funding up to 2015 to Post Office Limited to enable it to modernise the Post Office network.

As part of the Postal Services Act 2011, Post Office Limited became independent of Royal Mail Group on 1 April 2012. A ten-year inter-business agreement was signed between Royal Mail and Post Office Limited to allow post offices to continue issuing stamps, and handling letters and parcels for Royal Mail. The Act also contained the option for Post Office Limited to become a mutual organisation in the future. In April 2012, Paula Vennells was appointed as chief executive; she had been with Post Office Limited since 2007 as the network director. The first chair of the board of the new company was Alice Perkins, who had for a time led human resources management in the Civil Service.