Post office closures
This is proving to be a particularly busy week with meetings morning and afternoon every day. What makes it especially challenging is the publication of the Post Office’s plans to close 169 post offices – around one in the five – in the capital. As Chairman of the Greater London Region of Postwatch, the consumer body for postal consumers, I’ve done six radio and television interviews on the planned closures.
Nobody likes to see post offices close but the sad reality is that fewer people are using post offices – visitors are down from 28M a week to 24M a week – and Post Office Ltd is losing more and more money – losses have risen from £100M a year to £200M a year. Therefore Postwatch accepts that the network needs to be smaller if it is to be sustainable.
The closures proposed for London are similar to the scale of closures taking place in every other part of the country. Even after the closures, however, there will still be 681 offices in the capital, almost 90% of Londoners will still be able to go to the same office, and the other 10% or so should not have too far to travel to an alternative office.
We need to be sure, however, that these closures cause the minimum disruption and inconvenience to customers. This is why Postwatch took advantage of the opportunity to spend three weeks examining and challenging the Post Office’s proposals for London before they went into public consultation and why we stand ready to make further representations if the public consultation reveals new information.