Small businesses greet Royal Mail bonuses with disdain

Small business bosses will react with disdain to reports that six Royal Mail directors have received £1m pay and bonus packages says the FPB.

The Forum of Private Business, which represents 25,000 small to medium sized firms and sits on Postwatch, said it is staggered by the huge pay outs - the highest being £2.55m to Chief Executive Adam Crozier - given that the Royal Mail has missed many of its performance targets.

"Small business owners will shake their head in disbelief at these whacking bonuses for public sector staff who have risked none of their own money to reap these massive rewards,' said the FPB's Chief Executive Nick Goulding.

Mr Goulding said it should not be forgotten that the Royal Mail failed to hit any of its 15 performance targets during the three months to June 2004.

"The Royal Mail's lack of reliability, reflected in its failure to hit all of its performance targets, is inflicting serious costs on small businesses which rely on the postal service so heavily,' he said. "The increasing lateness of the daily delivery is totally unacceptable. Moreover the decision by Royal Mail to rationalise their financial problems by introducing changes to sorting, transport and deliveries has clearly increased the problems experienced by businesses. The Royal Mail has considerable work to do to rebuild confidence particularly in light of the scrapping of the second daily delivery which bosses are still angry about."

Mr Goulding added that analysis of calls received by the FPB's member information services team showed a significant increase in complaints about the Royal Mail's service over the last three years.