Despatch Services

The three girls who operate the decollating and chopping section. Tina Rayner (later Tina Mann), Tracey Devine and Elaine Gent.

Margaret Hoar, seated centre, with her two colleagues Ann Norton and Fiona Thake (later Fiona Lindars).

Porters / office movers John Froom, Les Vaughan, Richard Truslow and Harold Moore.

The machines that sort, fold and stuff the envelopes operated by Francesca Burton, Julie Small, Judy Hartley, Brenda Arnot and Colin Dawson.

Between them they walk miles per day. Hemel's mail messengers Janet Gourlay, Gillian Oliver, Sally Hobbs, Susan Chart and Arthur Horne.

When despatch means 30,000 items - and that's not Christmas cards.

Walk into the despatch room at the company's Computer and Account­ing Centre at Hemel Hempstead on the fifth or sixth working day of any month and you'll see a hive of activity to com­pete with any small post office sorting area near Christmas.

On a single day, the one on which the majority of the company's accounts are sent out, Post Office vans arrive almost hourly to take away the output into the mails and on their way to customers.

On one of these days some­thing like 30,000 customer statements 5,000 or so daily in­voices, 3-4,000 agency invoices will be processed through the despatch. The day following there could well be a dis­tribution of marketing litera­ture running to the 70-80,000 level through the Post Office's Datapost system.

The name despatch belies some of the tasks undertaken by the branch which is super­vised by Margaret Hoar with Ann Norton as her number two and Fiona Thake at number three.

As well as despatching out­going mail the branch deals with all incoming letters and parcels. On the parcels front they often get some unusual packages which have got nothing to do with the com­puter centre at all. Most recent in a collection of miscellany were cases of closure taps des­tined for some offshore oilfield platform, a few boxes of protective footwear and a five gallon drum of perfume con­centrate.

"Usually," says Margaret Hoar, "they are either wrongly addressed and for other com­panies or the supplier sends the goods to the address where he should send his invoice. We then have to make sure they get safely to the person who placed the original order."

The branch provides a mail circulation service around the computer centre with a band of four young ladies, Janet Gourlay, Gillian Olive, Sally Hobbs and Susan Chart, led by Post Office inspector Arthur Horne. Between them this group covers miles every day delivering and collecting mail from the multi-storey office block. They also provide an escort service for visitors to the centre.

The despatch branch has a fairly high turnover in person­nel and this is not because there is a predominance of ladies who might "retire" to married life. The branch is regarded as a training ground for young people entering the company and they usually spend a month or two there before moving into some other sphere of the centre's oper­ations.

The other additional service provided by Margaret's team is that of office removers, com­puter stationery distributors and movers of office equip­ment. These jobs fall to a quartet of men, John Froom, Les Vaughan, Richard Trus­low and Harold Moore.

Most of the output on a "customer statement day" originates from the computer print out of accounts, all 30,000 of them. These have to be split in two, one copy for the customer, another for the company's records.

Now we're up to 60,000 pieces of paper which have to be decollated. It sounds pain­ful but in fact all the term means is that the accounts are run through a machine which simply cuts off the holes punched at each side and makes the account a more manageable size physically.

A team of three girls work in the cutting and decollating room, Tina Rayner, Elaine Gent and Tracey Devine. Despite all the chopping and cutting that goes on none of these attractive young ladies bears the least resemblance to the infamous Madame Defrage in the Tale of Two Cities.

Chopped and decollated, the accounts move down a floor courtesy of John Froom and his colleagues, the machine area on the ground floor where ingenious pieces of machinery fold  the accounts and stuff them in envelopes before they are franked for mailing.

The folding and stuffing machines have capacious appetites and fold and stuff at a high rate. They are clever too! They can recognise accounts destined for the same cus­tomer, collect them and use only a single envelope instead of perhaps two or three.

All this is achieved by means of coded marks on the accounts which are picked up by a scanner as the paper passes through the machine.

On statement days the machine area is alive with activity and needs a fairly high workforce. This is where Jackie Hoard, Francesca Bur­ton, Julie Small, Cathy Bates, Judith Hartley, Brenda Arnot and Judith Lamotte, work, aided and abetted by the only male on the machine shift, Colin Dawson.

All this might suggest that despatch simply sits and twid­dles its thumbs from the end of one batch of statements to the next month. Nothing could be further from the truth. They also look after the statement work for many marketing dis­tributors; send out literature to field staff, organise courier services between Hemel, Knightsbridge and Victoria, and a separate courier with the Shell computer centre at Wythenshawe; and send out many other daily accounts all of which will help the cash flow into BP Oil.

Taken from BP Oil News - January 1979

During late 1979 Margaret Hoar took a period of absence. I was asked by George Fish to supervise this department for a short period of time (I think it was only for a few weeks). There were a few things that needed managing and sorting out for the staff, part of which I believe was some new equipment.

I was well supported by Ann Norton, Fiona Thake and Tina Rayner. A few things I recall...

The conversations amongst the girls could be quite enlightening and fruity. I remember during one tea break having my office door open listening to a very young Nick Charles (who had just come from Wales with his parents; Nick's father David also worked for BP Oil) being asked some rather pertinent questions by Julie Small.


The Pulleston's courier and taxi contract had been given to another cheaper and unreliable company. Complaints were numerous; the final straw was Jim Hitchen arriving a BP House in a clapped out cab and on exiting the cab the door fell off! I negotiated the contract back to Pulleston's, which was then being run by Mick Tuhey (spelling?) - Terry Pulleston having retired.

The porters were real characters. They always had something or someone to moan about. They particularly hated clearing up around the circular car park after evening functions at BP House!

The Christmas Suppliers Lunch in 1979 was held at Piccotts End Village Hall. I recall Margaret Hoar reappearing there and not being to amused that changes had been made in her department!