The Ministry of Town and Country Planning was a ministry established in 1943 by the Churchill war ministry, the government of the United Kingdom at the time. Its remit covered England and Wales. It was established to secure "consistency and continuity in the framing and execution of a national policy with respect to the use and development of land throughout England and Wales". The first minister was William Morrison, previously the Postmaster General.
The London postal district is the area in England of 241 square miles (620Â km) to which mail addressed to the London post town is delivered. The General Post Office under the control of the Postmaster General directed Sir Rowland Hill to devise the area in 1856 and throughout its history it has been subject to reorganisation and division into increasingly smaller postal units, with the early loss of two compass points and a minor retraction in 1866. It was integrated by the Post Office into the national postcode system of the United Kingdom during the early 1970s and corresponds to the E, EC, N, NW, SE, SW, W and WC postcode areas. The postal district has also been known as the London postal area. The County of London was much smaller, at 117 square miles (300Â km), but Greater London is much larger at 607 square miles (1,570Â km).
The General Post Office (GPO) was the state postal system and telecommunications carrier of the United Kingdom until 1969. Established in England in the 17th century, the GPO was a state monopoly covering the dispatch of items from a specific sender to a specific receiver (which was to be of great importance when new forms of communication were invented); it was overseen by a Government minister, the Postmaster General. Over time its remit was extended to Scotland and Ireland, and across parts of the British Empire.
The GPO was abolished by the Post Office Act 1969, which transferred its assets to the Post Office, so changing it from a Department of State to a statutory corporation. Responsibility for telecommunications was given to Post Office Telecommunications, the successor of the GPO Telegraph and Telephones department. In 1980, the telecommunications and postal sides were split prior to British Telecommunications' conversion into a totally separate publicly owned corporation the following year as a result of the British Telecommunications Act 1981. In 1986 the Post Office Counters business was made functionally separate from Royal Mail Letters and Royal Mail Parcels (the latter being later rebranded as 'Parcelforce'). At the start of the 21st century the Post Office became a public limited company (initially called 'Consignia plc'), which was renamed 'Royal Mail Group plc' in 2002. In 2012 the counters business (known as 'Post Office Limited' since 2002) was taken out of Royal Mail Group, prior to the latter's privatisation in 2013. The privatised holding company (Royal Mail plc) was renamed International Distributions Services plc in 2022.