Leighton moves in at Consignia

ALLAN Leighton, the former chief executive of Asda, has been named interim chairman of Consignia, the parent company of the Royal Mail. Leighton, who had previously declined an invitation from ministers to take the chair as successor to Neville Bain, told the Evening Standard's Business Day he changed his mind on condition that his appointment is only short term while a full-time chairman is found for the company.

However, that may not prove easy, as the kind of chief the Post Office needs will want far more of a free hand than the Government, Consignia's only shareholder, may be willing to offer.

During the search, which could take up to nine months, Leighton will be fully hands-on. As a condition of taking the job Leighton has insisted on being given powers to tackle some of the most pressing problems. The Post Office suffers from a collapse of morale, overmanning, and increasing union militancy, and a failure by its management to exert its authority effectively.

The confidence of the organisation has been undermined further because private sector competitors will soon be allowed to compete with some of its key services.

Leighton welcomes the competition and says it would be a misplaced strategy for the Royal Mail to seek to preserve its monopoly at all costs. Instead, he believes the new postal services regulator should allow the private sector to provide alternatives for all the postal activities. But in return for accepting the challenge of private-sector competition there should be no constraint on what Consignia can do.

'If we let them in then we must be allowed to fight without one hand tied behind our back,' he said.

Though Consignia faces major challenges, Leighton is optimistic for a business which he believes has great potential. The postal service is basically an exercise in supply chain management, like supermarkets, he said.

Great progress can be made by finding out what issues cause most day-to-day difficulty and seeking to address them. However, this requires shop-floor management to be motivated to tackle problems themselves, he believes.

Since leaving Asda, Leighton has put together a series of non-executive appointments, among them the chairmanship of lastminute.com and Wilson Connolly, the housebuilder.

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