Protecting the network of local post offices

Conservative governments in the 1980s and 1990s oversaw the closure of 3500 local post offices. Since then under Labour there have been 4000 closures and a further 2500 have been approved.

The Alverthorpe, Bradford Road (Wakefield), Hardwick Road (Pontefract), Kirkhamgate, Lofthouse, Outwood, Pontefract Road (Castleford) and Upper Altofts branches are scheduled to be shut down in this round of closures.

It is Post Office Ltd's intention that another half of the 12000 post offices that will remain at the end of the year, should this stage of the closure programme go ahead, will then also be closed, leaving a network of around 6000.(cont)

Labour has chosen to make a profoundly shortsighted, antisocial Conservative policy its own, careless of the effect it will have on pensioners, the disabled and those on low incomes.

The post office is often the one remaining lifeline in many rural and deprived urban areas where all other services have been lost.

A recent CAB survey has found that over half the over-65s and those on means-tested benefits use a post office more than once a week, that over half the over-75s and those on means tested benefits use the post office to pay bills.

More than two thirds of the people that live in rural areas rely on their local post office to buy groceries. Whilst three quarters of those who currently use post offices walk to them, nearly ninety per cent will have to go by car or bus if their branch closes.

But Post Office Ltd's first priority is forced to be to make a profit not to serve the public, and that means post office closures.

For all their enthusiasm for local campaigns to save individual post offices, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives share Labour's commitment to tired old failed private sector dogma and would do the same were they in government.

A thousand post offices closed in the last five years the Conservatives were in power. When the Liberal Democrats have run cities like Sheffield and Liverpool they have cut and privatised every bit as much as the Conservatives.

There are councils around the country looking at taking over and running post offices and this is a way forward in the short-term. It at least prevents equipment being ripped out of closed branches while discussions take place with Post Office Ltd.

But councils financially squeezed by government cannot be relied on to keep post offices open. It is no substitute for a national, democratically controlled, public service in which the future of local branches is decided by those who work in and use them.

NSWF