Post Office: Staff nomination and appointment

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• Held At: GB 813 The Royal Mail Archive, Freeling House
• Finding Number: POST 58 Series
• Ref No: P/58
• Date: 1737-1988
• Level: Series
• Extent: 77 files, 260 volumes, 2 bundles and 57 microfilm reels
• Creator Name: GPO
• Administrative or Biographical History: The appointments procedure in The Post Office during this period was very complicated. Employees could either be Established, which meant they had privileges and rights, such as superannuation, or they were non-Established, which meant that they were probably part-time, and had no benefits or job security. Established employees were also civil servants and therefore were affected by any changes in the system, such as the gradual efforts to replace patronage with examinations and grading. Sub-postmasters and packet captains were not officially employed by The Post Office but were sub-contracted. Sub-postmasters tended to work in another line of business such as greengrocing and run a sub-post office as a side-line. Up until the end of the nineteenth century appointments were made by a system of patronage. Staff were appointed by being nominated to posts. Although they were supposed to then take a test of competency, this was often just a formality. The broad sweeping changes in the Civil Service with the introduction of competitive examinations meant that this practice was abandoned at the end of the nineteenth century.
• Description: This series contains records relating to the nomination and appointment of staff, both Established and non-Established. It consists mainly of volumes, in which vacancies, nominations, and appointments were recorded. It also contains records relating to bonds paid, and papers relating to the appointment of specific individuals. Finally, there are statistical reports on employment trends in the 1970s and 1980s, generated by the STEM (staff statistics system) computer database.
  
  Prior to 1831 appointment records were not kept uniformly over the country and separate series were created. In 1831 centralised employment records were created by copying the relevant minute numbers and brief details relating to appointment, transfer, dismissal, resignation, retirement, or death.
  
  Some records were transferred from POST 14.
  
• Language: English
• System of Arrangement: The material is arranged in date order within series.
• Legal Status: Public Record
• Access Status: Open
• Access Conditions: Files subject to closure according to the 20-year rule transitional timetable. All the reports in the STEM (Staff statistics system) sub-series are subject to extended closure until various dates under a section 40(2) - Personal information Freedom of Information exemption. Please refer to individual file and item descriptions for full details.
• For more information contact: British Postal Museum and Archive

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