2,500 post offices to close by 2009
Post offices are losing £4million a week
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Thursday, 14, Dec 2006 04:32
More than 2,500 post office branches will close over the next 18 months, as part of government plans announced today to modernise the network.
Trade and industry secretary Alistair Darling told the House of Commons that post offices were collectively losing £2 million every week last year, with the figure expected to rise to £4 million over the next 12 months.
A consultation on the future of the country's urban and rural post offices was today opened, with the government at the same time pledging to invest £1.7 billion in the network to maintain its long-term future.
The plans have been attacked by both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats for failing to take into account people, particularly pensioners, in isolated areas who rely on post office services.
Mr Darling today insisted that post offices still had an "important social and economic role" to play.
But he went on to say: "There is widespread recognition that the current size of the network is unsustainable, that is why it is important to build on innovation. It is about the right post office for the right place."
The government is proposing to introduce mobile post offices, as well as part-time services in village halls and community centres. Also announced today was the possibility of new criteria that stipulates 90 per cent of Britons must be within one mile of a post office.
"Post offices face a long-term challenge: internet, email and text-messaging have meant that people, young and old alike, increasingly use the phone or internet banking, cash point machines or direct debits to pay their bills. People are increasingly choosing to access services in different ways resulting in some four million fewer people using their post office each week than two years ago," the trade and industry secretary said.
While Conservative post office spokesman Charles Hendry said the closure of more than 2,500 branches would "bring fear and anxiety to people, often the most vulnerable,
in every part of the country", postal regulators Postcomm and Postwatch broadly welcomed today's consultation.
Postcomm said it saw the consultation as the necessary first step for creating a sustainable network, while Postwatch explained that increasing losses and fewer transactions "cannot continue".
Ed Davy, trade and industry spokesperson for the Lib Dems, said that the closures represented the "death knell" for thousands of rural businesses.
"Rural and deprived urban communities will feel betrayed by these mass post office closures," he claimed.
Countryside Alliance chief executive Simon Hart accused the government of "missing the point", saying that the "social value of the post office network cannot be measured in financial terms."
However, the director general of charity Age Concern, Gordon Lishman, claimed that the government had finally "woken up to the problem of post offices".
"A commitment to continue the annual subsidy is good news and will help to prevent some post office closures. But much more thought must be given to developing a sustainable long-term strategy which will enable the post office network to flourish," he said.