{"id":1129,"date":"2008-10-06T10:38:18","date_gmt":"2008-10-06T09:38:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/wordpress\/?p=1129"},"modified":"2008-10-06T10:38:18","modified_gmt":"2008-10-06T09:38:18","slug":"waiting-for-poca-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=1129","title":{"rendered":"Waiting for POCA 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The last year has seen a substantial programme of post office closures &#8211; some 2,500 nationally &#8211; in order to make the network more sustainable in the face of many fewer customer visits and rapidly rising financial losses. As a member of the Council of Postwatch &#8211; the watchdog for postal customers which merged last week into Consumer Focus &#8211; I had to play a role in scrutinising this progamme, especially as it affected London, and arguing for modifications and changes.<br \/>\nBut the post office network &#8211; even with the closure of one in five outlets &#8211; is far from safe and the earliest threat is also the largest: the award of a Government contract for the successor to the Post Office Card Account (POCA) which enables pensioners and other benefit claimants to obtain cash and other services.<br \/>\nTowards the end of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/uknews\/3142152\/Post-office-closures-The-stamp-of-disapproval.html\">an article<\/a> in today&#8217;s &#8220;Daily Telegraph&#8221;, I am quoted for the first time in my capacity as a member of the Board of Consumer Focus. I point out that, if the new POCA contract is not awarded to the Post Office, there will inevitably be many more closures.<br \/>\nThe problem is that the rival bidder to the Post Office is PayPoint which has more outlets &#8211; some 20,000. Therefore, if the contract is awarded to PayPoint or shared between the Post Office and PayPoint, it could be a good deal for consumers in the short term but will probably lead to more post office closures in the medium term.<br \/>\nLet&#8217;s see what the Government announces &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The last year has seen a substantial programme of post office closures &#8211; some 2,500 nationally &#8211; in order to make the network more sustainable in the face of many fewer customer visits and rapidly rising financial losses. As a member of the Council of Postwatch &#8211; the watchdog for postal customers which merged last [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consumer-matters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1129\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}