BRITISH POST OFFICE

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 154, 28 December 1936, Page 10

BRITISH POST OFFICE

RECORD LEVELS

TURNOVER OF £901,000,000

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, December 2. The biggest employer of labour in Great Britain is the Post Office. It has a staff .of 252,000 to deal with a business which had, last-year, a turnover of £901,000,000. The official report shows that business for the year shows an increase of £40,000,000 over the previous year. The net working surplus was £12,266,000, an increase of £321,000. An absolute high record was reached in the number of letters, postcards, etc., dealt with. They totalled nearly 7,350,000,000—an increase of 400,000,000 over 1934-35. Parcels also reached the record total of 162,000,000. The increase of 12,000,000 over the previous year was largely accounted for by the reduced charges from July, -1935. Reduced tariff for telegrams—nine words for 6d —is considered to have been chiefly responsible for the increase from 35,292,000 in 1934-35 to 44,490,000 for the year under review. In previous years there had been a steady decline in the number of telegrams. ' . The growth of telephone business showed a further acceleration. Local calls increased by 127,000,000 to 1,722,000,000, and trunk calls from 06,000,000 to 99,000,000. The number of telephones in service rose by 191,200 to 2,579,000 —the greatest increase ever recorded in a single year. The 44,000 public call offices in service at March, 1936—half of them street kiosks —were more numerous by 1400. There were 5500 telephone -exchanges and 12,500,000 miles of wire, of which 11,000,000 miles is run underground. This high proportion of underground plant, with its relative immunity from storm damage, is a characteristic feature of the British telephone system. ■ Postal orders issued increased in value from £71,626,000 to £80,787,000, and money orders from £59,572,000 in 1934-35 to £61,965,000 in 1935-36. Savings "bank deposits reached a new high record at £390,000,000—an increase of. £35,000,000. A slight decrease in the popularity of Savings Certificates is shown by a fall in the value remaining invested, at purchase price, from £393,036,000 to £391,450,000.