06 December 2010
Mr Robert Whittaker
Freedom of Information Unit
2nd Floor
Email: [FOI #30917 email]
Royal Mail Sheffield
Pond Street
Sheffield
S98 6HR
[Royal Mail Group request email]
www.royalmail.com
Dear Mr Whittaker
Re: Freedom of Information Request
I am writing in relation to your request for information dated 17th March 2010. Royal Mail
Group has been in communication with the Information Commissioner’s Office about this
case. The ICO has advised us to provide you with more information about our reasons for
believing that the information you requested is exempt from disclosure under the terms of
the FOI Act.
The requested information
You requested detailed information about the location of postboxes, as recorded in Royal
Mail’s Central Collections Management Database, in particular:
1. Postbox number
2. Postbox location description
3. Postcode
4. Last collection times
5. Location co-ordinates used to calculate the position of the postbox on an electronic
map
Royal Mail considers the information you requested to be exempt from disclosure under two
sections of the FOI Act. The first is the exemption that applies where Royal Mail intends to
Royal Mail Group Ltd is registered in England and Wales. Registered number 4138203. Registered office: 100 Victoria Embankment, London, EC4Y 0HQ.
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publish information in the future – section 22. The second is the exemption that applies
where release would prejudice commercial interests – section 43(1) and section 43(2).
Section 22
Royal Mail considers Road/Location information recorded in the database in question to be
exempt under section 22 of the Act. At the time of your request it was planned to publish
information encompassing al publicly accessible collection points through an update to
Royal Mail’s website. This was to include Post Offices and shops with a Post Office counter,
which are classified alongside postboxes as collection points and all postboxes. This would
provide the website user with the “postbox location description” you requested. The Co-
ordinates Data were to be used to power the tool, but would not themselves be published.
Nor were the postbox number, postcode or collection times to be available on the website.
In addition to the intention to publish this information on Royal Mail’s website, it was also
intended to make postbox location information available through another IT-based product
that will allow users to search for postboxes in a particular area by entering a location or
postcode. The position of the postboxes in the search area will be displayed on a map. This
will provide the user with postbox location information recorded in the collections
management database. It wil also provide users with information about the latest
col ection times for the relevant postboxes. It is therefore the case that this information
about postbox location and collection times will shortly be published by Royal Mail. Royal
Mail intended to publish this information at the time it received your request. The launch of
this product is expected to take place in the near future.
Even though the information was not planned to be published as raw data, in the manner
you requested, this does not detract from the central point that Royal Mail did intend to
publish the information at the time the request was received. Royal Mail therefore intended
to publish the postbox location description at the time that your request was received.
Application of section 43(1)
Royal Mail is relying on section 43(1) in relation to Co-ordinates Data. It is not relying on
section 43(1) with regards to the Street & Postcode Data, or any other information
requested by you.
While any member of the public can observe the location of a postbox and give, for
example, the name of the street on which it is located and the last collection time as
detailed on the box itself, they would not be able to give the precise geographical co-
Royal Mail Group Ltd is registered in England and Wales. Registered number 4138203. Registered office: 100 Victoria Embankment, London, EC4Y 0HQ.
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ordinates of the postbox (latitude, longitude, northing & easting values). The Co-ordinates
Data is therefore not public knowledge, nor common knowledge in the business community.
Furthermore, the requested information is more valuable than the information taken in by
someone passing by on a public highway because it is collated in one place. The fact that
the requested information contains a comprehensive and definitive list of all postbox
locations gives it a value that is far greater.
The Co-ordinates Data is used in the course of Royal Mail’s trade with its customers. They
enable us to manage the collection of the items that customers pay us to transport
effectively, for example by planning collection routes. The Co-ordinates Data is therefore
used for the purposes of trade.
By providing information on its website, Royal Mail planned to encourage members of the
public to visit the website. Increased internet traffic enables Royal Mail to better publicise
its products and services better. Those products and services are offered in a competitive
marketplace. The marketing of services and products is part of trade. The Co-ordinates
Data is also used in the soon to be launched IT-based product that will allow users to
search for postbox locations where again it will be used for the purposes of trade.
Application of Section 43(2)
Royal Mail believes that all of the requested information is covered by this exemption. The
information in question was compiled by Royal Mail over some time through the course of
its operations. The information is recorded for the purposes of planning routes and
supporting daily operations. In addition to this, at the time of your request, and as stated
above, two products were in development which made use of the data and were
commercial y valuable to Royal Mail.
The release of any part of the requested information at the time of the request would have
jeopardised the anticipated benefits of these products. As already stated, it was expected
that the update to Royal Mail’s website would mean that more members of the public would
access the site and therefore provide Royal Mail with significant marketing opportunities.
Having found the website useful, customers would be more likely to visit it again. At that
time there were already open source websites
1 seeking to collate the location of all
1
www.dracos.co.uk/play/locating-potboxes
www.openstreetmap.org/
Royal Mail Group Ltd is registered in England and Wales. Registered number 4138203. Registered office: 100 Victoria Embankment, London, EC4Y 0HQ.
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postboxes across the country and it was likely that those websites would use the requested
information to supplement their data. That would make those sites more comprehensive
and more useful and as a result fewer people would visit Royal Mail’s website to search for
the information in question.
There is already an iPhone app that allows users to search for postboxes in a particular
area called “Find Postboxes”. This was created and designed by Elbatrop Ltd. Elbatrop Ltd
charges £0.59 for downloading the app. We cannot say for certain where the information
for that app comes from, but it is likely to come from a combination of information released
in response to previous requests and open source websites that seek to collect postbox
location data from the public. Release of Royal Mail’s own information would mean that the
difference between the quality of information which Royal Mail plans to release itself and
information provided by others would be very limited. Royal Mail’s concern is that release
of any of the requested information would cause fewer people to seek to access the
information from Royal Mail’s products. This is because the information is likely to be used
either to update the Find Postboxes app and open source websites or enable the creation of
new apps. This would limit Royal Mail’s opportunity to advertise its other services when
providing the information to users itself.
Royal Mail intends to charge for the new IT product that is to be launched. At the time of
the request Royal Mail also envisaged that the update to the branch locator tool would
increase the number of visitors to its website and provide a valuable opportunity for cross-
sel ing. It is Royal Mail’s belief that the benefits to be gained from the commercial
exploitation of the requested information would be significant.
Royal Mail is currently going through a period of rapid modernisation in order to ensure
that it remains commercially viable as mail volumes continue to decline. Such
modernisation is not subsidised by government; any government funding used to
modernise the collection and delivery of mail is in the form of loans at commercial rates. In
the recent update to the Hooper Report (an independent review of the postal service in the
UK)
2, commissioned by central government, poor cash flow was identified as a key obstacle
to driving through modernisation
3.
2
http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/biscore/business-sectors/docs/s/10-1143-saving-royal-mail-universal-postal-
service.pdf
3 page 18
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“The Group is therefore unlikely to be able to fund its modernisation programme from
operating cash flow on any continuing sustainable basis, even given the Government’s
existing debt facilities of £1.2bn. With the market continuing to decline, Royal Mail has to
modernise faster than was original y planned.”
It is therefore the case that even relatively modest damage to Royal Mail’s revenue could
have a significant effect given the nature of Royal Mail’s position.
Moreover, prejudice to commercial interest is not the same as losing money, as is reflected
in the distinction drawn by the Commissioner between commercial interests and financial
interests. Just as not all things that cause a public authority to lose money prejudice
commercial interests, neither is it the case that al prejudice to commercial interests must
involve direct monetary loss. Royal Mail has a commercial interest in encouraging people to
visit its website. This is a legitimate commercial interest in itself, as wel as being an
interest that, if damaged, wil lead indirectly to loss in revenues. Royal Mail’s position is that
release of the requested information would be likely to prejudice Royal Mail’s commercial
interests, and that the likelihood of such prejudice materialising is high.
Royal Mail understands that each Freedom of Information Act request should be considered
in the light of the circumstances prevalent at the time it is being responded to. The
application of the exemptions is very context specific. So, for example, when responding to
past requests in 2009 for postbox location information at a time before Royal Mail had
plans to exploit this via its website and the IT based product, Royal Mail released postbox
location information. Had Royal Mail sought to withhold this information under section
43(2) at that time, we would have expected the Commissioner to rule that we had not
applied the exemption correctly, as we could have given no clear idea of what damage
would be caused by releasing the information.
The situation at the time of your own request had changed as by that time Royal Mail had
concrete plans to use the postbox location data it held to further its commercial interests,
as outlined above, and the benefits of those initiatives would be jeopardised by release of
the requested information. Furthermore, this request was the first time that we had
received a request for the Co-ordinates Data since it first started being collected in 2008.
To date, Royal Mail has not released the Co-ordinates Data. Royal Mail has invested a
significant amount in the continual updating of the Co-ordinates Data through its initiative
to collect location information through PDAs used by employees.
As explained above, we cannot say for certain where the information for the Find Postboxes
phone application originates from as it was not built by Royal Mail, but an analysis of the
Royal Mail Group Ltd is registered in England and Wales. Registered number 4138203. Registered office: 100 Victoria Embankment, London, EC4Y 0HQ.
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results it returns leads us to believe that the data that supports it is likely to come from a
combination of information we have already released in response to previous requests and
open source websites that seek to collect postbox location data from the public, there are
also open source websites seeking to collect information about the location of postboxes
that offer search facilities similar to the update planned to the branch finder tool at the time
that your request was dealt with.
The prejudice caused by the uses to which Royal Mail’s information has already been put is
limited by the fact that a small amount of the information is now out of date and Royal
Mail’s initiatives will use current information, which is also more precise by virtue of the
collection of the Co-ordinates Data. At the time the information was released and was
current, Royal Mail did not have any competing products or services available or planned for
launch, so no prejudice was caused at that time. However, if Royal Mail had released the
information that you requested this would not be the case. Based on the evidence given
above on what has been done with this information in the past, there is a very strong
likelihood that near to current data including precise geographical co-ordinates would have
been used to power rival products and on open source websites in direct competition with
Royal Mail’s initiatives.
I hope that this letter is helpful in explaining Royal Mail’s position. We wil continue to assist
the Information Commissioner’s Office with their investigation of this case.
Yours sincerely
Colin Young
Freedom of Information Manager
Freedom of Information Unit
Royal Mail Group Ltd is registered in England and Wales. Registered number 4138203. Registered office: 100 Victoria Embankment, London, EC4Y 0HQ.
© Royal Mail Group Ltd 2010– Page 6 of 6
