Chamber and committees

Good morning. Regardless of the service issues that sometimes arise, the work of your staff, certainly in my area of the Highlands and Islands, is very much appreciated. They are out in all weathers, and I think that any of us who goes campaigning in all weathers appreciates the efforts that are made.

In remote rural and island communities, there are concerns that the service is not as regular as it is in other parts of Scotland. What are some of the challenges with and concerns that you have about delivering the current six-day service and how might those areas be impacted if there was a five-day service?

Okay; that is grand.

I will ask about the consultation that you do with local communities, because the service impacts on them and on local businesses. What consultation do you do with them on the service that is provided and what they need, and how regularly do you do that?

As somebody with a KW postcode, I recognise that.

If a letter arrives at a delivery office, will it always go out as soon as possible? I do not know whether this is the right term, but would you sometimes bank or put together a few letters for a remote household or community to ensure that you are not doing one journey just for one piece of mail, or do you try to ensure that, if there is a piece of mail to be delivered, it will be delivered on the day that it should be?

Does that consultation include households and ordinary users or just businesses?

If a minister had said, “Look, we’re concerned about the viability of the scheme and whether it will go ahead”, might that have influenced your decisions?

That is good, because I know that there is a concern, particularly with things such as broadband, that the easy fruit is always picked rather than, for example, broadband being supplied for the house miles up a road—there are quite a few of them.

You have covered a little bit about how you will look at the corporate structure: how everything works in SNIB and what changes you that you might need to make for the structure to be more responsive or streamlined, or however you feel that it has to be. How much of a priority is that for you and what timescales do you have on that?

When was the last withdrawal? Was it recently?

I certainly had contact from producers that had not heard that CSL was going into administration until yesterday, so you essentially had a heads-up before they did.

Was SNIB not asked for additional support?

How might you be able to help, other than by providing capital?