Post Office Limited

This article is about the UK retail post office company from 1970. For its prior history, see General Post Office. For the UK postal service and courier company, see Royal Mail. For national postal networks in general sometimes called "the Post Office", see Mail. For other uses of the name and term Post Office, see Post Office (disambiguation).

Post Office Limited
Native name
Welsh: Swyddfa'r Post Cyf.
FormerlyPost Office Counters Ltd (1987–2001)[1]
Company typeState-owned private company limited by shares
IndustryPostal service
PredecessorGeneral Post Office
Founded13 August 1987[1]
Headquarters
London
,
England
Area served
United Kingdom
Key people
Revenue£885 million (2023)
£50 million (2023)
OwnerGovernment of the United Kingdom
Number of employees
3,592 (2023)[3]
Websitepostoffice.co.uk Edit this at Wikidata

Post Office Limited, 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.[4]

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,[5] in what has been described by the Criminal Cases Review Commission as "the biggest single series of wrongful convictions in British legal history".[6][7][8]

  1. ^ a b "Post Office Limited". Companies House. 13 August 1987. Retrieved 14 January 2024.
  2. ^ Patel, Rina (18 July 2019). "New Group Chief Executive appointed". One Post Office. Post Office Limited.
  3. ^ "Post Office Limited Annual Report & Financial Statements 2022/23" (PDF). The Post Office. p. 96. Retrieved 4 July 2024.
  4. ^ Booth, Lorna. "Post Office Numbers" (PDF). UK Parliament. House of Commons Library. Retrieved 30 October 2023.
  5. ^ "Public Hearings Timeline". Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry. Retrieved 23 January 2024.
  6. ^ "The CCRC and Post Office / Horizon cases". Criminal Cases Review Commission. 3 January 2024. Retrieved 4 June 2024. The Post Office Horizon scandal, which is the subject of the ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office, is the most widespread miscarriage of justice the CCRC has ever seen and represents the biggest single series of wrongful convictions in British legal history.
  7. ^ "Post Office scandal explained: What the Horizon saga is all about". 21 April 2021 – via www.bbc.co.uk.
  8. ^ Johnston, Neil; Somerville, Ewan; Pinkstone, Joe (8 January 2024). "The Post Office bosses who presided over biggest miscarriage of justice in legal history". The Telegraph – via www.telegraph.co.uk.