Guernsey Post set to lose 35 workers due to financial pressures

More than 30 staff members at Guernsey Post have taken voluntary redundancy due to financial pressures on the company over the past year.

With fewer letters being sent and a competitive parcel market, the company is set to lose around £1.5 million this year.

The 35 staff members, mostly coming from the operations team, will leave the business throughout the year in phases starting in April and leading up until the end of December.

Guernsey post hope that the redundancies will ease the monetary pressures on the company and reduce costs for the postal service in the long-term.

Chief Executive of Guernsey Post, Boley Smillie, says other changes will be happening this year as well as the redundancies to help balance the books.

He says: "It's a major transformation we are undergoing, but we have other initiatives under way so obviously our parcel installation which happens in the summer, plus we've got a number of commercial issues that we have to deal with as well."

He also says there are lots of challenges facing the industry at the moment: "most of these are commercial pressures which unfortunately we've got no control over so we hear much about industrial action in the UK from Royal Mail, that's having an impact on consumer confidence.

"There's a lot of downward pressure on price - generally e-commerce companies want lower prices for better service and then of course we've got high inflation, increases to transport costs - it's a perfect storm of commercial issues for us."