Post Office closures: How the Government ignored the public

[Geezer]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... utcry.html


By David Harrison
Published: 8:30PM GMT 14 Nov 2009


A scathing report from the Public Accounts Committee has said the Government ignored complaints over its plans to close 2,500 Post Offices.
But the findings came as no surprise to one man whose own branch was forced to close last December.


Richard Kersley had been running his village post office for 31 years when he went to a residents' meeting about its proposed closure last year. He was pessimistic.

Despite a nationwide campaign, backed by MPs and pressure groups, to halt the closure of 2,500 post offices, Mr Kersley had little faith that the villagers' voices would be heard in the Government's "consultation period".

"I knew the consultation was a sham," said Mr Kersley, 80. "The Government never had any intention of listening to our concerns. They wanted to close my post office and that was it."

Months later, Mr Kersley's worst fears were confirmed. He served his last customers at the post office in Kingsdon, Somerset, in December last year.

Last week his conviction that the 350 villagers' concerns would be ignored was also proved to be accurate.

A scathing report from the Public Accounts Committee, said that complaints over the 2,500 post office closures were "ignored". The committee chairman said the brief consultations were "nothing more than a piece of window dressing".

The damning document said that the Government did not consider the impact of closures but only the "relatively modest economic benefits".
Only a small percentage of people were even aware of the consultation and the closures had caused much "distress" and "upheaval".

Mr Kersley still runs the village shop, which used to house the post office, but says the closure has affected trade. "People used to come in for the post office and pick up a few things from the shop," he said.

"It's a big loss. The post office was the hub. People used to meet and chat there. And it's the same all over the country. The closures will have a terrible effect."

Residents first learnt about the proposed closure in February last year when Mr Kersley was asked to put up a notice from the Post Office in his shop. It said the branch was being considered for closure and that villagers would have to use the post office in Somerton or Ilchester, both about three miles away.

Local people were invited to out any their objections in writing and the six-week "consultation period" would end on April 9.

The villagers feared the worst but they swung into action. More than 100 people crammed into the village hall in March and speaker after speaker denounced the plans. The mood was angry and the opposition was unanimous.

Dozens of residents wrote letters expressing their concerns about closure, arguing that the post office was well-used and a vital part of village life.

David Heath, the local Liberal MP, and Annunziata Rees-Mogg, the Conservatives' parliamentary candidate, visited the village and expressed their support for the campaign.

Patrick Leahy, a parish councillor and retired airline cabin crew member, said: "Nobody wanted closure. This was yet another attack on the village and our way of life and we were determined to fight.

"We need a post office. We have a lot of elderly people in the village, including some in their nineties, and it is invaluable to them, not just for its services but also as a place to meet people and talk.

"But we had seen what had happened in other parts of the country and we knew we faced an uphill struggle."

The villagers already felt under siege. A special school, Kingsdon Manor, which was owned by Bristol city council, closed last year with the loss of a dozen jobs and the primary school was also threatened with closure, though it was eventually saved.

Residents feared that their concerns about the branch were not being heard. They did not receive not a single visit by an official from the Post Office or the Government to discuss their views.

Their letters were acknowledged only with a standard reply which did not say that their views were being considered, only that they would be "carefully recorded".

"It was a consultation that was going nowhere," Mr Leahy said. "It was not a real consultation at all. It was a sham from beginning to end."

Months later, they were told that the post office had to go and just before Christmas, the busiest time of the year, the shutters finally came down.

All that remains of it are the first class stamps on sale in the shop and the post box embedded in the building's wall. "I'm sure they only left that because they didn't want to pay to repair the wall," Mr Kersley said.

Mr Leahy added: "They wanted to save money and that was the end of it, although I am sure it will take them years to recoup the cost of making thousands of post office staff redundant.

"Now if we want to send a letter recorded delivery or send a parcel we have to travel nearly three miles to the nearest post office, where parking is difficult.

"Those without cars, including some of the village's many elderly residents who have difficulty walking, have to take the bus which runs once an hour and, in Somerton, walk 330 yards from the bus stop to the post office.

"It can take over two hours to post a letter recorded delivery." Mr Kersley said.

Penny Simpson, 40, a mother-of-two who has lived in the village all her life, said: "It seems they are just chipping away at rural life in this country. My mum now has to travel three miles to pay a bill.

"We thought the closure was a foregone conclusion from the word go. I think they just put pins in a map to mark where the post offices were and chose the ones to close without giving any real thought to the impact it would have on local people."

The MPs' report said that around 190,000 people across the country submitted their views, but many felt they were "not being listened to properly" or that "the decision had already been made".

Mark Wallace of the TaxPayers' Alliance said the Government was using consultations "as PR" and "tricking people rather than consulting them".

"The Government is pretending to listen to public opinion and then ignoring it," he said.

There are now just 11,500 post offices left in Britain, compared to a peak of 25,000 in the 1960s. Forty per cent of post offices open in 1997 have closed since Labour came to power. Post Office Ltd has been making a loss for the past nine years.

The Public Accounts Committee said the money saved by the closures was "less than impressive". The programme cost £157 million, including £122 million in compensation to sub-postmasters.

In Kingsdon, villagers fear that the shop will be the next piece of village life to go. The octogenarian Mr Kersley, who did a paper round until earlier this year, has no plans to stop working yet but he is not in the best of health.

The shop is unlikely to be taken on as a going concern and could be converted back into a house.

"Every village needs a shop and I will keep going as long as I can," Mr Kersley said. "But when the post office goes, the shop often follows."

[Lounge Lizard]

"said Mr Kersley, 80" - Most people that age would welcome a chance to retire, and if most of the villagers are of a similar there's little long term hope for the Post Office anyway.

[DirtyHarry]

The ruling class never listens to people's concerns. Who listens to us about our concerns for our jobs and futures? The very same people turning a deaf ear to the "public's" concerns about post office closures, that's who.

[ExSG]

Multiply this story by many hundreds even thousands and that is the picture from the last twenty odd years. No government wants to subsidise the Post Office system despite the fact that the public could possibly be persuaded that it was good value for money.

Whilst many of us demonstrated outside PO's, together with local people and organisations it was invariably galling that the staff in the office we were tryng to save were unwilling to give support even in their lunch times

One of the best exceptions was Haverhill in Suffolk. Splendid action by the locals and 100% support from the staff. The manager brought in to keep the place open kicked the TV people out which earned us enormous publicity.

Once again, this so called Labour governement lets its supporters down. They really are an embarrassment.

[Lounge Lizard]

And to make Post Offices less viable the tories sold National Girobank, which as a proper persoanl banking service at every Post Office had been a great asset, off to Alliance and Leicester.