The Post Office plans to close 115 branches and cut hundreds of jobs in its head office under a strategic review led by new chairman Nigel Railton.
Among the 11,500 branches around the UK, there are 115 wholly-owned 'crown' Post Office branches, employing around 1,000 workers and mostly loss-making.
One element of the plan is to franchise them out like the rest of the network, to an operator such as WH Smith PLC (LSE:SMWH), which currently runs around 100 branches.
For the company to propose these plans while the inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal continues is a "tone deaf" move, the Communication Workers Union (CWU) said.