Regulator ‘cost Guernsey Post a million last year’
Thursday 22nd July 2010, 2:29PM BST.
DEALING with the regulator cost Guernsey Post £1m. during the last financial year.
In the company’s annual report chief executive Gordon Steele said the Office of Utility Regulation had been ‘a huge drain on their reserves’. He also claimed that errors in a price calculation by it have lost the company £500,000 in revenue.
Relations between Guernsey Post and the regulator deteriorated rapidly over the last year, with the former appealing to the Royal Court the OUR’s proposals to reduce its reserved area to £1.
Mr Steele (pictured) said the company had been forced to take on extra accountants and consultants to conduct a one-year price review in order to provide the detail that the OUR demanded.
‘We should not have to employ dedicated people just to provide information to the regulator.’
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If the OUR wants these figures they should be paying for them! Not Guernsey Post.
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I am sure that all the regulated banks/trust companies in Guernsey would whole-heartedly agree with your point.
If the GFSC wants these figures, the GFSC should emplys staff directly and pay for their salary…. oh no, wait, that would mean that the tax payer would be paying for that cost…
I’d suggest that Guernsey Post stop taking its regulator to court wasting hundreds of thousands of punds of tax payer’s monies trying to be a bank! Then they could happily afford the costs of compliance with OUR rules.
Glad to know that the Chairman is adamant about continuing down the road to become a bank, I am sure after a few million is spent on this, Gsy Post MIGHT get a licence and i am sure that its profitability will soar…. Or it will have to recover those lost millions before it becomes profitable again…..
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If GPL don’t like complying with regulators when they are a Post office monopoly imagine how they are going to react when they are a retail bank and compliance is crawling all over them and their UK directors?
Banking aside…..Can anyone tell me why GPL isn’t using our money to protect and develop core logistic services instead of accepting their business model is redundant and re-inventing themselves as a different business…surely the States should be supporting whatever it takes to maintain our postal services, not supporting a company that will, amongst other things, perhaps deliver our post? If GPL wants to be some sort of profit driven corporate behemoth, ready to sell anything, at any price, then should they still enjoy their protected species status and tax payer ownership?
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Post office Board cost its shareholder (us) One Million Pounds on an aborted bank last year.
talk about teflon and deflecting criticism – how does he do it?
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