Restructuring
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 Ltd and Parcelforce.
85 Crown Post Offices were closed, 70 of which were sold to W H Smith. This followed a trial of six Post Office Outlets in W H Smith stores. W H Smith 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 November 2010, the government committed an additional £1.34 billion of funding to Post Office Ltd to enable it to modernise the Post Office network.
Following the separation of Post Office Ltd from Royal Mail on 1 April 2012, a 10 year inter-business agreement was signed between the two companies to allow Post Offices to continue issuing stamps and handling letters and parcels for Royal Mail.
Read more about this topic: Post Office Ltd