Post Office blames ‘unseasonable weather’ for drop in June cash transactions

Post Office (PO)’s cash deposits and withdrawals dropped to £3.43bn in June, after reaching £3.57bn in May.

The PO has cited ‘unseasonable’ weather as the reason for the drop, stating that the decrease follows two consecutive record-breaking cash-handling months at POs.

Meanwhile, business cash deposits also fell by 3.4% year-on-year to £1.13bn in June, and dropped by 5.3% month-on-month. Personal cash deposits also dropped by 4.6% month-on-month, from £889m in May to £836m in June.

Scotland saw the most dramatic drop month-on-month (-6.7%) in cash withdrawals.

Ross Borkett, banking director at PO, said: “Post Offices play a vital role in supporting small businesses to trade by providing a convenient and secure location to deposit their cash takings with many branches open long hours and some at weekends. Following two consecutive record-breaking months for cash handling at Post Offices, June’s cool and wet weather slightly impacted takings in the hospitality and leisure sectors contributing to a small drop in business cash deposits at our branches last month.” 

Chief executive steps down

The news follows PO chief executive Nick Read announcing that he is to “step back” temporarily from frontline duties to prepare for the next stage of the Horizon IT inquiry.

In a note to staff on 12 July, Read said he wanted to devote his “entire attention” to a hearing on the scandal in September. Read is expected to give evidence in the final phase of the inquiry, which will look at practices and pro­cedures within PO and put forward recommendations for its future.

“It is vitally impor­tant we demonstrate the changes we have made and give confidence to the inquiry and the country at large that nothing like this could happen again,” Read wrote to staff.

Every group represent­ing subpostmasters – the NFSP, CWU and Voice of the Postmaster – has stated that not enough has been done to fix the imbalance of power between branch own­ers and PO.