Who Owns Post Office?

The Post Office is owned by the government. Companies House names the owner in unusually direct terms: the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, legal form Corporation Sole, holding 75% or more of the shares of Post Office Limited. It is not privatised, and it is not the same company as Royal Mail — the two separated in 2012 and Royal Mail is now privately owned. Ownership verified 6 September 2026.

Who owns Post Office today?

The company is POST OFFICE LIMITED (02154540), incorporated 13 August 1987 and previously named Post Office Counters Ltd.

Its person with significant control is the Secretary of State for Business and Trade — a government minister, recorded in the legal form Corporation Sole, which is how an office rather than a person holds property in law.

It is one of very few entries on the register where the controller is a serving minister. The others on this site are the Public Investment Fund at Newcastle United and the BBC’s Royal Charter registration, both also unusual legal forms.

Ultimate parent and corporate structure

There is no parent above the Secretary of State. The government holds the shares directly, having previously held them through an intermediate company: Postal Services Holding Company Limited (04074919) ceased as the recorded controller on 12 June 2017, when ownership moved to the minister.

The Post Office is publicly owned but not a government department. It is a company with a board and its own accounts, receiving government funding and operating under a framework agreement — a structure comparable to National Highways, covered on this site’s Dartford Crossing page.

Most branches, though, are not owned by the Post Office at all. The great majority are run by subpostmasters — independent businesspeople operating under contract, often within their own shop. That contractual relationship, rather than employment or ownership, is central to what followed.

Major shareholders or controlling persons

There are no other shareholders. The government holds effectively all of the equity, and there is nothing to buy.

Ministers appoint the chair and are accountable to Parliament for the company, though the Post Office is run by its own executive.

Official records and evidence

Companies House answers the ownership question directly, which is rare enough to note.

For anything beyond ownership, the fuller record is elsewhere: the Department for Business and Trade publishes the framework agreement and funding arrangements, and the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry — a statutory public inquiry — has produced an extensive published record, including evidence and its reports.

The Horizon scandal, in which subpostmasters were wrongly prosecuted on the basis of faulty accounting software, is the reason most people now ask who owns the Post Office. The answer bears on it: the company was publicly owned throughout, which is why compensation has been funded by government and why ministers have been accountable for it in Parliament.

Ownership history and changes

The Post Office and Royal Mail were a single organisation for most of their history, under the General Post Office and later the Post Office Corporation.

• 1969 — the Post Office ceases to be a government department and becomes a statutory corporation.
• 2001 — reorganised as a public limited company, Consignia, then Royal Mail Group.
• 2012 — Post Office Limited separates from Royal Mail and becomes an independent, government-owned company.
• 2013 — Royal Mail is privatised and floated; the Post Office is not.
• 2017 — the shares move from the holding company to the Secretary of State directly.

That 2012 separation is the fact most often missed. Since then the two have been different companies with different owners, sharing only a commercial agreement under which Post Office branches sell Royal Mail products.

Related companies and brands

Post Office Limited runs the branch network and sells mail, banking, foreign exchange, travel money and government services.

Royal Mail is separately owned. It was bought in 2024–25 by EP Group, the vehicle of the Czech businessman Daniel Křetínský — who also, as this site’s Sainsbury’s and West Ham pages record, became Sainsbury’s largest shareholder and part-owns West Ham United. A single investor now sits behind Britain’s postal delivery company, a major supermarket stake and a Premier League club.

The Post Office also operates Post Office Money and has had banking partnerships over the years; those are commercial arrangements with banks rather than ownership of one.