Urgent Update – Eurest Catering Review
The department has been in discussions with Royal Mail concerning a Eurest catering review of all sites, including their plans on phased closure’s. Several meetings on this issue were held and the CWU made it clear that we did not support the proposals which we believe have been designed deliberately to commence the removal of subsidised catering across Royal Mail Group. Whilst recognising changes in customer preferences and reductions in footfall the department did share counter proposals and offered joint working to secure an outcome that is right for both the Eurest employees as well as our Royal Mail members who use the Eurest catering facilities, exactly the same principles that have shaped previous reviews.
Unfortunately, the business informed us on 19th June 2026 that they were progressing with their original plan, at which point a national DRP was registered, against what we viewed as an entirely unacceptable proposal. During the period of the DRP the CWU continued to meet with Royal Mail and separately with Eurest to scope potential solutions. At a meeting on the 15th July 2026 following those discussions with Eurest we offered to jointly produce an alternative plan which attempted to meet the £1.6m reduction in subsidy Royal Mail believe their plan would deliver whilst maintaining service at a greater number of sites.
To allow Royal Mail to consider the proposal the DRP was extended until the 2nd August 2026 however at a meeting on Friday 31st July, Royal Mail confirmed their intention to write to the CWU indicating that the DRP has been exhausted, that they reject any alternative solution and that they intend to progress unilateral deployment of their initial proposal. The unagreed changes to be implemented by Royal Mail include a plan for Mail Centres which is based on arbitrary sales targets set by Royal Mail which they know bear absolutely no relation to reality and which trigger predetermined outcomes based on sales.
The details are highlighted below
- All Delivery Office Canteens to close
- All units taking less than £100k per year will lose attended service and move to a vending only provision This will lead to 5 Mail Centre Canteen Closures.
- All units currently taking more than £100k but less than £200K will move to a single “attended” service, expected in most cases to be breakfast. At some sites this will result in the loss of 2-3 services. All remaining attended services will be M-F only with no provision on a Saturday this activity impacts 22 canteens across the Mail Centres and RDC’s.
Once the service has been closed within the identified units the business will provide vending only facilities going forward. Vending is not subsidised by Royal Mail and in our view cannot be described as a catering service.
The letter confirming the DRP has now concluded was received on Thursday 5thAugust and confirms the intention to progress this activity without agreement, attached for Information is the detailed list of the impacted units covered by the business rationale as identified above.
In our view, these changes will eventually lead to the closure of many if not all the above catering facilities as the reduction of the service available to members will inevitably reduce takings and bring them below the thresholds highlighted above which have been arbitrarily set with no rationale or data to support them. Royal Mail have indicated that they are working on a service reduction plan for the remaining sites.
What this plan amounts to is the commencement of the phased removal of an acknowledged employee benefit which has been available to members in Royal Mail Group for decades. At a time when Royal Mail’s direct competitors, operating similar “out of town” plants see subsidised catering as an invaluable benefit in recruiting and retaining employees, Royal Mail sadly appear to see subsidised catering as an unwelcome legacy cost which should be removed.
To instigate this unagreed action at a time when Admin members are being brought back to the office and on the eve of a joint reset of Industrial and Employee relations is extremely disappointing. This process including the DRP has in our view been disingenuous from the start, the business has not at any time genuinely considered our counter proposals or offers of working together to achieve savings via a different outcome. For our Eurest members, the initial program will create a surplus of around 40 roles and into a potential redundancy situation and for other members reductions in hours are likely as the service diminishes.
We have notified Royal Mail that the CWU cannot agree their proposals, and while the formal National DRP is now exhausted the matter has been escalated to the most senior levels of the company. While we would anticipate that further meetings may take place our focus must now also be on supporting units or Branches in Royal Mail affected by the changes. Where locally the members wish to oppose a closure or service reduction, we are willing to discuss all options available.
The department will also now engage with Eurest to progress discussions on people’s issues resulting from the decisions Royal Mail have taken to ensure that we can mitigate as much as possible the impact of the forced changes to service provision.
Any enquiries in relation to this LTB should be addressed to Davie Robertson, Assistant Secretary, email: jrodrigues@cwu.org or jmansell@cwu.org quoting reference LTB 220/26.
Yours sincerely,
Davie Robertson
Assistant Secretary
CWU Eastern No5 Branch 
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