Who is responsible for investigating crimes done through the post? The security man at the mail regulator suggests the question is up in the air because legislation to liberaise postal services was done in a hurry.
If someone sends human excrement to your organisation through the post, who do you call’ Not the police, according to Derek Webster, Chief Investigation Officer at the Postal Services Commission, the body that regulates postal services in the UK – Consignia and private post services. In a talk to Business Forums International’s European security congress in London in October, he repeatedly pointed out that police have over the years walked away from investigating post crime, leaving it to the Post Office – the Metropolitan Police in the 1970s for example breaking up a joint police-Post Office unit. Derek Webster has a Met background, and brief stints at Pirelli and Securicor, before he took his current post last year. In the Europe-wide ever more liberalised post environment, if your organisation chooses a post operator other than Consignia, the Postal Services Commission is the body to tell you if a postal company is licenced to do what it says it is.
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Mr Webster began his talk by showing how postal investigation has a longer history than most – horse-drawn mail coaches being a target for the likes of Dick Turpin. The Post Office Investigation Department was set up in 1792. The POID had a prevention and detection role – notably in the so-called Great Train Robbery of a Euston to Glasgow Royal Mail train in August 1963. To give an idea of the scale of mail in the UK – 85 per cent of which is from businesses – Consignia handles 80 million items of mail a day, delivers to 27 million letterboxes, and has 1,500 delivery offices and 83,100 vehicles.
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To meet a European Postal Services Directive, the Postal Services Act 2000 (PSA) set up Postcomm – the the Postal Services Commission. Derek Webster was Postcomm’s first enforcement officer, and he described enforcement as ‘a complete blank sheet of paper’ and had to work out how to meet statutory requirements – on data protection, for instance. ‘I now will not deal with any information from anybody unless they are registered with Data Protection [the Information Commissioner].’ Postcomm does have enforcement powers (section 48) if people refuse to co-operate, and has powers of entry and seizure on warrant (section 49). Arguably more important to security managers are the sections of the PSA that detail criminal offences – such as interfering with mail (whether by postal staff internally, or by the public); sending unlawful items through the post; and sticking adverts on some letterboxes. The PSA however does not spell out who is responsible for solving the crimes as defined by the PSA.
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Derek has sought direction from the Government, and has made the issue known to interested parties such as Europe, the postal industry and police. He described ACPO as ‘horrified’ at the prospect of having post-crime fall in the remit of police. Postcomm has put a case to the Treasury that the regulator has an implied duty to be responsible for criminal offences – thanks to a European directive that ‘member states shall ensure that transparent, simple and inexpensive procedures are drawn up for dealing with users’ complaints, particularly in cases involving loss, theft, damage or non-compliance with service quality’. Postcomm is waiting to hear back from the Government.
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Meanwhile, what if a container load of your mail gets dumped – whether because of fraud or dishonesty by a postal carrier employee, or mere inefficiency’ Derek Webster ended by giving delegates a security helpdesk number – 0208 681 9876 – that puts you through to a call centre (also for whistle-blowing) for postal security problems, that assigns you to a local Post Office security manager.
