{"id":11490,"date":"2016-11-04T15:54:28","date_gmt":"2016-11-04T19:54:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digital.hbs.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/climate-change-edging-the-uk-towards-its-last-letter\/"},"modified":"2016-11-04T15:54:28","modified_gmt":"2016-11-04T19:54:28","slug":"climate-change-edging-the-uk-towards-its-last-letter","status":"publish","type":"hck-submission","link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/climate-change-edging-the-uk-towards-its-last-letter\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate Change: Edging the UK towards its last letter?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Climate Change: Edging the UK towards its last letter?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sending letters since 1516!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Royal Mail PLC is the UK\u2019s largest universal postal service provider, supporting customers, businesses and communities across the UK. Royal mail operates under a \u201cone-price-goes-anywhere\u201d, six-days-a-week service on a range of letters and parcels to more than 35 million addresses across the UK \u2013 the Universal Service agreement. The Group delivers around 1.1 billion parcels and 15.6 billion letters. Royal Mail PLC is a key component of the UK\u2019s economic and social infrastructure, providing services to private individuals, companies and communities and employing c.160,000 people. In October 2013, Royal Mail successfully floated on the London Stock Exchange and was subsequently admitted into the FTSE100. Around 700,000 members of the public bought shares in Royal Mail.1<\/sup><\/p>\n

The challenge: Rising costs and hazardous conditions <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Increased flooding, rising sea levels, more intense weather events, and changes in temperature and precipitation patterns disrupts Royal Mail\u2019s ability to provide mail service and increase costs for maintaining infrastructure. These issues jeopardise the universal service agreement and endanger the lives of the thousands of employees that work for the business. Operations are most affected by extreme weather events which can delay and disrupt mail delivery. 1<\/sup> Given that 6.2 million people in the UK lives by the coast areas, sea level rise driven by climate change puts many of the service\u2019s facilities and staff at risk.<\/p>\n

Strengthening the operation: <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Royal Mail\u2019s existing planning for disruptions to mail delivery includes the preparation and response to these events. Climate change adaptation initiatives seek to identify how long-term planning and collaboration across functions can reduce the costs associated with extreme weather events. This includes infrastructure design, network configuration, and creation of common resources that help decision-makers take the changing climate into consideration. Further, Royal Mail\u2019s climate adaptation planning must take into account not just the cost to rebuild a facility after a weather-related event, but also downtime, equipment loss, availability of backup processing support and other significant cascading effects. 1 2 3<\/sup> The objective of Royal Mail\u2019s adaptation process is to avoid or minimise these damages. Examples of key events include: changes in the severity of damages related to extreme storm events, sea level change, extreme rain, and temperature changes that lead to temperature-related health risks and infrastructure damage. 3<\/sup><\/p>\n

The key is to minimise operational downtime and to regain full site restoration and repair. Royal Mail\u2019s action response plan provides standardised procedures for natural disaster planning, initial response, mitigation, and facility repair. Ongoing revision is informed by actual experience with such situations in order to learn from exteme weather conditions and fluctuating temperatures that pose difficulties to Royal Mail employees.<\/p>\n

CSR at the forefront of company KPIs:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n