Post Office in confusion

Nice point made by Cllr David Parker at the public scrutiny meeting on proposed post office closures at County Hall yesterday (Friday)...

All the consultation on the proposed Network Change closures assumes the Morpeth Main Post Office is in Back Riggs - so post office users from Mitford or St Mary's Field are being referred to Back Riggs as their 'nearest'. Unfortunately - the Back Riggs Post Office is due to close at the end of October, and even if it is 'saved', it will be somewhere else in the town. So as David says - the consultation is flawed and should be withdrawn.

Personally - I think the consultation is also flawed because there seems to be no requirement to have a 'sustainability appraisal'. Government legislation requires all local authority plans and strategies to have an appraisal - I'm surprised that the Post Office Network Change strategy doesn't. Such an appraisal would immediate flag up things public transport access, and how other community activities and local businesses depend on the local post office.

Any delay in the closure programme would be useful - because it might give the new unitary authority a chance to get it's act together and 'do an Essex' to save the post offices. Or at least work with parish councils, community groups etc to provide 'Plan B' alternatives if the Post Office goes ahead with closures based on a very narrow concept of what a post office is about. It's reminiscent of the flawed analysis Beeching used when he just looked at ticket sales to determine which rail stations to close.

Campaigning against Post Office closures

Good rapid response from the LibDems in starting a petition again closure of St Mary’s Field Post Office. And – of course, we should all be campaigning to keep all our post offices open. They are a community service not a business and should be considered as such.

However – I’m going to nitpick about the LibDems’ approach:
i) We need to campaign to keep all our post offices open. If we campaign heavily to keep a particular post office open – then Post Office plc will simply close another one whose supporters are not so loud. And often, it is the more deprived communities who fail to put together an articulate protest – and so lose out.
ii) I’m all for ‘community leadership’, but somehow it strikes me that councillors should be supporting and facilitating community campaigns rather than initiating them. But then, the LibDems got elected to the unitary authority, not me – so maybe I’ve got it wrong.
iii) And – it seems odd, that the political group in power is leading a campaign calling for action to be taken – that’s far more the action of an opposition political group. Maybe the LibDems haven’t yet got their heads round the fact that they are in power.

No sign of the LibDem-run unitary preparing a ‘plan B’ to take on the post offices (like Essex CC) if Post Office plc decides to close them – nor any sign of the unitary intervening in the imminent closure of Morpeth Main Post Office. These are the sorts of things I’d expect the political group in power to be doing – not raising petitions

An Apology?

2nd April: Ok - that was a rather wishful April Fool (though it caught a Morpeth Herald reporter!) - public agencies like the post office don't generally admit mistakes or apologise.

So - in less than six months time, the Co-Op franchise post office in Back Riggs will close - and to the best of my knowledge, there's no new franchisee - let alone a new site - in view.

There's a lot of political talk that the new unitary authority might 'do an Essex' and run rural post offices itself - but I can't see that being sorted out within the next six months.

I've also heard rumours that GMDT are talking to Business Link with a view to taking on the Post Office - but if so, they are being (necessarily) secretive about it.

So - if you've heard any rumours - or you actually know what might be going on, please post a comment here!

1st April: The Post Office has apologised and admitted that they were wrong in closing the Crown Post Office on Oldgate.
"We now recognise that a market town like Morpeth which serves a wide community needs a main post office."
Plans are in place to re-open the Oldgate Post Office when the Co-Op franchise post office in Back Riggs closes at the end of October.