Royal Mail is proposing to relocate Inverness mail centre and delivery office to a new site which would have more than double the amount of operational indoor floor space. Inverness mail centre is the only fully manual mail centre left in the UK so it is expected to include new sorting automation in the future. It will also include enough space for its red fleet, customer and staff parking.
It represents an investment of £6.6 million by the company and underlines its commitment to Inverness and surrounding areas. Royal Mail expects that housing growth in Inverness will mean it will have many new addresses to serve in the coming years as well as growth in parcel deliveries.
“This is part of Royal Mail’s ongoing transformation of its business to increase the efficiency of its operation and provide an even better service for our customers. It will also provide a mail centre and delivery office which is fit for purpose for our people and for our customers.”
– Royal Mail
As a commercial business, Royal Mail is responding to the huge growth in electronic communications and decline in letter volumes, while seeing a high volume of parcels and online shopping which need to be delivered to customers.
It’s also worth noting that many carriers don’t have a true presence in the Scottish Highlands, once a parcel has to leave the major Scottish cities they’ll be passed to a third party carrier to carry out the actual delivery. This lack of service and employment of third parties is of course what leads to courier surcharges which infuriate consumers, frustrate ecommerce merchants and have riled the Scottish Affairs Committee. Royal Mail do of course delivery to every household in the country at a flat rate with no surcharges.
“I very much welcome this significant investment in Inverness by Royal Mail. This is very positive news indeed for the Highland capital.”
– Fergus Ewing, MSP for Inverness and Nairn
Once the move to the new site in Seafield Road is complete it’s expected that Royal Mail would sell off the old Strothers Lane site.
One Response
wonder how much this will cost the tax payer/ scottish government / highland council,
Housing growth in inverness sounds a bit lame,
put into Context
the whole highland area only has a population of
250.000 ,the whole of scotland itself just over 5 million
yet Newbury West Berkshire alone ,has a population of over 150.000