Post Office’s crucial role with cash featured in new BBC programme about the journey of cash from Bank of England to a Post Office

• This episode of BBC 1’s Dom Delivers is first shown on Friday 22 October 10am
• Dominic Littlewood has rare access to a Post Office cash centre and Bank of England
• Post Office is the largest distributor of cash
• Filmed during the pandemic it shows the vital role that cash plays in our society

Dom Delivers is a fascinating and entertaining new BBC1 daytime programme about logistics, with one episode highlighting Post Office’s crucial role in the journey of cash.

Popular presenter Dominic Littlewood was given rare access to film at the Bank of England and a Post Office Cash Centre. The series, focussing on 10 different logistics chains, starts on Monday. The episode about cash is aired on Friday 22 October 10 – 10.45am.

The final part of the filmed journey is at a Post Office in a busy city centre where customers are seen withdrawing and depositing their cash.

The Bank of England is the UK’s central bank and Post Office is the largest distributor of cash across the UK with a network of 11,500 branches, plus ATMs.

Dom Delivers follows the end to end delivery of a wide variety of products for the entire journey including blood, milk, white goods and cars. For security reasons the journey of cash is very carefully filmed to give nothing away to criminals and Dominic Littlewood references the very tight security involved throughout the journey of cash.

Dominic gets the chance to operate the very high-speed, sophisticated note sorting machines that check for fake, foreign or damaged notes. These machines rotate the notes so that they face the same way and stacks the notes into neat bundles. This makes it easier for people working in Post Offices to handle the cash and to load ATMS. Many people think they get brand-new notes as they are so crisp, but the reality is that money is constantly recirculated.

One of Dominic’s favourite moments in the episode about the journey of cash, was the opportunity to empty a huge bag of coins into a coin sorting machine. He describes it as “the big money shot”. There is a cacophony of sound, requiring ear defenders, as the coins topple into the machine for sorting and bagging. A small camera also dropped in with the coins shows the journey of the coins in the machine.

Dominic is well-known as a cheeky chappy. He strikes up amusing banter with the staff throughout the journey of cash, but the identities of the staff who work with the large sums of cash day in day out, are protected.

Post Office Supply Chain Director, Russell Hancock, is interviewed and he explains about the vital role Post Office plays in ensuring that branches have the right amount of cash in the right denominations. Most customers don’t want large notes or big handfuls of coins.

People are normally creatures of habit. Postmasters and branch managers can normally roughly predict the likely amounts of money that will be deposited by business and personal customers and the sum of money that is likely to be withdrawn, which varies depending upon the time of year and even days of the week.

However, nothing has been normal during the pandemic, especially during lockdowns and the Post Office cash centres had to be very agile to ensure that Post Office branches did not have too much or too little money.

Suddenly, Post Offices in villages, housing estates and small towns were much busier than normal as people wanted to stay local and many people were working from home, so the Post Office cash centres had to adjust to big changes in branches cash requirements. More people also discovered that they could do their banking on behalf of all the high banks at any Post Office, which they found more convenient. So, Post Office’s role in banking has surged.

At the start of the lockdown there was huge deposits of cash as people banked money that they did not need as they were not serving customers or going out and people were at first encouraged to use cards, but with the country returning to the new normal, people are reverting to their usual ways. Many people still prefer to use cash as they find it much easier to budget their finances.