Postcomm has rejected calls to revamp Royal Mail’s Postal Address File – including complaints about pricing and excess profits – although it has pledged to improve transparency and the overall operation.
PAF contains all 28 million delivery addresses and postcodes for both residential and business premises, and is a vital tool in data and address verification. It forms the backbone of a wide range of UK industries, from high street retailers to financial services organisations.
Despite Royal Mail revising the terms of use in 2009, and introducing greater flexibility and lower entry costs, Postcomm received 105 responses to a consultation on PAF, launched last September. These featured a number of substantive responses, including one from the Met.
The Met originally complained that the PAF licence changes had cost it an extra £25,000 to apply PAF to key crime reporting systems, due to an increase in the charge for each additional application used, and £500,000 to the whole police service, with no obvious improvement in data quality.
However, Postcomm responded that the introduction of the National Address Gazetteer, offering essential address data free of charge to the public sector, will result in a reduction in costs for the Met.
And, answering concerns over excess profits, Postcomm said that any over achievement of the profit target should be considered cumulatively over a three year period, rather than simply year on year. It claimed: “This will would allow the board to consider a programme of investment improvements, including the extent to which investments are allowable and the extent to which price reductions are needed as an alternative measure to deal with excess profits. Going forward, we believe this should be linked to the three year work programme of the board.”
