MP OLIVER LETWIN: Decline of rural post offices is finally starting to improve

[TrueBlueTerrier]

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Recently, there was a good deal of anxiety in Dorchester about the possible closure of the post office at Victoria Park.

This particular issue has now gone away, as it has now been decided that the post office in Victoria Park will remain open.

However, this episode prompted me to investigate what has been happening to post offices across West Dorset as a whole over the last few years.

Readers of this column may recall that, for many years, there was a rather rapid decline in the number of rural post offices, and there were increasing concerns that the network would eventually virtually disappear.


So what has happened since the Post Office network was privatised in 2012?

The answer is that the number of post offices across the country has remained virtually constant – falling slightly from 11696 in 2013 to 11634 in 2014 and rising again to 11643 in 2015. Roughly 99.7% of the population nationally now lives within three miles of a post office and 92.9% of the population lives within one mile of a post office.

In West Dorset, where I have been dealing with specific issues about specific post offices for the last couple of decades, there are now signs that the situation has stabilised – and even some signs that it is improving.

We now have 43 post offices in West Dorset. Seven of them are now open on Sundays. And the total number of hours in which they are open has gone up by 350 hours per week since 2012.

Certainly, we need to remain vigilant about all of this, because village post offices (and of course the larger post offices in the towns) continue to perform an invaluable service for the community in many different ways. But is good to see the demolition of the network which had been taking place, has been arrested and may even be beginning to be reversed.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Mr Letwin You should really check your statistics more carefully and not rely on Post Office propaganda the network size of 11,643 that you quote includes over 700 long term closed branches, there are a further 1350 branches who have been identified as being unviable without subsidy, Victoria Park is one of them, which your Gov are refusing to support from 2018 onwards, so they are closures in waiting, this hardly constitutes an image of stability does it? The rest of the Network has been transferred into the hands of private retailers who have received little or no training and the complaints of inadequate service by the public are on the increase, the much publicised increased hours that the Post Office says exist are very much a lottery as many retailers are unable to afford to staff these longer hours. The Post Office computer system Horizon is well past its sell by date and is the subject of a High Court litigation which if goes against the Post Office will have terminal consequences for the Post Office, Post Office revenues are in decline and no new work is being gained by the company, all this on a Conservative Government watch.
The Minister for the Post Office adopts a sans faire rein attitude to all of these very real threats to the very existence of the Post Office.
My advice to you Mr Letwin is not to delude yourself that all is well with the Post Office, it is in a serious state of collapse. I represent Postmasters Nationally as the Branch Secretary of the Postmasters Branch of the CWU, and before you write me off as some anti Conservative person, I have previously served as a Cabinet Member of Wiltshire County Council, and as a Salisbury District Councillor and Deputy Chair of Salisbury Conservatives Association.