Union presses for radical expansion of Post Office services

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Post offices should be allowed to process court fines and issue repeat prescriptions as part of a radical expansion of services to help secure the network's future, MPs were told today.

Union leaders pressed local and central government to switch a vast range of services to post office branches in rural areas as well as city centres to generate new sources of income.

Andy Furey, national officer of the Communication Workers Union, also called for an expansion of so-called crown offices - the larger branches usually sited in high streets - as well as upgrading existing offices to make them "bigger and brighter".

He told the business and enterprise select committee that major cities including Coventry did not have crown offices because of a spate of closures.

He won immediate sympathy from committee chairman Peter Luff (Conservative), who said the crown office in his Worcester constituency had closed.

Mr Furey said post offices were "trusted and traditional outlets" for government services on the high street and the organisation's future was dependent on this role being developed.

The union submitted a series of suggestions to the committee on which services it believed could be handled at post offices, including financial advice, rent payments, passport interviews, help with filling in government forms, visas for foreign travel, payment of court fines, tax self-assessment and repeat prescriptions.

Mr Luff said the ideas were "interesting", but believed that some, such as issuing prescriptions, could be "problematic", asking the union for further information.

The union also proposed that the Government sets up a People's Bank, based around the post office, which it believed would generate additional revenue as well as tackle the issue of financial exclusion.

"The current economic climate makes the establishment of a People's Bank particularly timely," said the union submission.

Post Office managing director Alan Cook later told the committee there was a "huge opportunity" to expand services such as payment of council rents, but not all local authorities were currently involved.

Only a minority of authorities accepted rent, council taxes and other payments to be processed in post offices, he said.

Mr Cook said he shared the "frustration" expressed by Mr Luff that more government and council services were not available in post offices.

Mr Luff said responses from Government departments to the committee's inquiries showed that some "hadn't even thought" about which services could be provided at post offices.

Mr Cook maintained that a range of financial services were already available in post offices, including travel insurance and cash machines, adding: "We just don't call it a Post Bank."

Around 20 new services have been launched in the three years since Mr Cook took up his post.

He continued: "We cannot go any faster. We have a post bank already - what we want is to make it bigger and more successful."