Ministers want to turn the Post Office into a co-operative and have asked business experts to investigate ways of handing control of the 364-year-old institution over to the subpostmasters who operate it.
Management consultants have been asked to explore ways to turn the scandal-hit body over to an employee-owned mutual, similar to the way the John Lewis Partnership is run, Sky News reported. The Department of Business and Trade engaged Boston Consulting Group to carry out a commercial study of the future of the Post Office.
The work is said to be at an early stage but a report will be handed to Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, within months.
Calls for a review of the Post Office have grown since the wrongful conviction of hundreds of subpostmasters accused of stealing cash from their branches.
The cases, labelled the UK’s biggest miscarriage of justice, sparked national anger after being portrayed in the ITV television drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office.
Last night, campaigner Alan Bates cast doubt on the plan. “I personally don’t think this will work. Currently, the government subsidises it and will continue to have to support it. They can’t just give it to the subpostmasters and say: ‘Here you go, mate’.
“I don’t think mutualisation is going to save the government or the taxpayer huge amounts of money because it’s going to be subsidising the Post Office for many years once it gets off the ground, no matter how good the scheme is,” he told the Sunday Times.
James Arbuthnot, who also campaigned for justice, expressed doubts about subpostmasters’ ability to afford it.
Last year the Post Office lost about £76m and has liabilities of £799m.
A public inquiry into the Post Office miscarriages of justice has been told that a replacement for the Horizon IT system at the heart of the scandal could cost up to £1.1bn.
Previous governments have examined similar plans but abandoned them in the face of problems.
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Liam Byrne, chair of the parliamentary business select committee, said mutualisation was an option with lots of potential.
Most post offices generate their revenues by providing a variety of government services, which have tightly controlled profit margins.
Its more than 11,600 sub-post offices are privately run as franchise operations of the Post Office.
A review of the Post Office by the consulting firm Teneo is expected to recommend shrinking directly employed staff from 3,500 to 1,000.