Taxpayers face £1.7bn bill to shut post offices

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http://www.nwemail.co.uk/news/viewartic ... ?id=823229

AN angry shop owner has blasted the government for landing the taxpayer with a £1.7bn bill to close 2,500 Post Offices.

Clive Leal, who runs the retail shop at Leven Valley PO branch in Backbarrow, chaired a protest meeting attended by more than 250 people in the village school’s dining room.

They are fighting to keep the post office, one of 35 across Cumbria earmarked for closure, open.

Mr Leal said: “I think the government has got its sums wrong. It is going to cost £1.7bn to close all the 2,500 post offices across the country. They are currently supposed to be losing £3m a week, so at that rate it would take 11 years to lose £1.7bn.

“So, rather than spend that amount now, why not let the £3m a week trickle away gently and close the post offices by a process of natural progression when the people running them retire or pass away? And who is going to pay for that £1.7bn? You and me. It will come out of our taxes and it’s a complete and utter nonsense.

“The geography of the closures around here is open to question, too. There are six post offices at Lindale, Flookburgh, Cartmel, Kents Bank, Allithwaite and Grange all within a few miles of each other that are being kept open, and then you get a great swathe between Bowland Bridge and Ulverston with no post offices at all, if ours goes.

“The outreach service that is proposed at the Whitewater Hotel is just not practical.

“There are great big ‘No Parking’ signs all around the place and it is a dangerous road to walk along to get to it as well.

“They say you will be able to tax your car at the

outreach place, which you can’t do here. But how many people are going to use that facility if you can’t park up to go in and do it? It’s completely nonsensical. They quite often put these outreach facilities in shops. Well, here I am, in one, and they haven’t offered me the opportunity to run it. It’s all been done in complete and utter secrecy.â€