Cumbria County Council’s cabinet member responsible for community development has hit out over the Post Office’s refusal to extend the consultation period for the proposed closure of 35 branches in Cumbria and to replace a further 10 branches with outreach services.
In a meeting held yesterday (April 7) with the Post Office, county council members and officers were informed that despite previous representations, and a further request yesterday, the official consultation will not be extended beyond May 27 and closures will begin as early as July.
Cllr Gary Strong, cabinet member responsible for community development, said: "Communities should have had more time to fight to keep their post offices, but the Government has laid out the rules for the national closure programme and there’s no chance of Cumbria being made an exception.
"The Post Office made it clear that there’s no room for emotional pleas in this consultation. The consultation is about the factual evidence the Post Office has built around the proposed closures –so communities should challenge the facts if they are wrong. This means looking closely at the Post Office’s rationale behind closing the selected branches and pointing out if things have changed since they did their research. If bus routes have changed, new housing developments have been built, or there are other local factors that the Post Office has not taken account of, then it is really important that members of the public respond to the consultation.
"It was also made clear to us that dozens of branches will close or be replaced with outreach services in Cumbria and the Post Office has a national target to close 2,500 branches as the network is losing £4m a week nationally. This means that even if some of the branches targeted in Cumbria are ‘saved’, then other new branches in Cumbria would most likely be added to the list. It’s a Catch 22 situation and all Cumbrians can do is try and ensure that the impact of these closures is minimised across the county.
"The county council has already supported a number of rural post offices through its CRISP scheme (Cumbria Rural Infrastructure Support Programme), which was established in 2005 and has so far safeguarded over 90 jobs and helped invest over £4m in rural projects. But it seems that supporting potentially sustainable post offices is not an option in this closure programme. The Post Office is not interested in support –it is only interested in closures. Even if it did hand over the keys to the business to a community, then it would demand to be paid for any support in training, infrastructure and management. An already struggling post office would be rendered totally unsustainable if it had to pay for that support from the Post Office network."
At the meeting it was agreed that county council officers would work with the Post Office to ensure that the post office network which remains after this network closure programme can remain viable in the long-term. The county council is also working with branches that are listed for closure to assess the impact on related businesses such as village shops to explore whether these can be made sustainable after the closure programme.
ENDS
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