Gary's views

POST OFFICES

In May of this year a battle Royal is set to commence. I refer not to local council elections which will come and go, as usual, without interfering in most people’s lives, but to a fight of a much higher order. In May, the Post Office will be announcing which of Devon’s post offices will be culled in the next instalment of the government’s policy of closing 2,500 around the country. It will be unveiled as a consultation exercise, of course, but do not be fooled. Elsewhere in the country very few branches have escaped closure once initially on the hit list.

The criteria used in this massacre of yet more cherished institutions are: customer numbers, proximity to other branches, financial benefits to Post Office Limited of closure and relative size of the branch. In rural areas, the proximity test will be met if the post office in question is more than 3 miles from the nearest other branch. In suburban areas (and I can think of 3 or 4 branches in Plympton and Plymstock) which may well appear on the kill-list, the distance is one mile.

In many areas it will be the vulnerable who will suffer most, having to relocate elsewhere to draw their pension or buy their stamps or licences. The reason for this closure plan is to save money. This is the same reason why the railway branch lines faced Beeching’s axe in the 1960’s. How short-sighted. What would we give now to have back all of that local railway infrastructure so that we could have small trains chugging from village to town getting carbon heavy cars off the road and keeping our rural areas alive.

What can be done? When the list is announced it is my intention to support every community that organises itself in a campaign to keep its post office open. If you feel yours is under threat, you may want to be thinking about this now. We cannot do much to challenge geography – although we must make sure that the distances are measured in the way humans, not crows, have to travel - but the amount of business conducted over the counter is a crucial factor we can change. If you want to retain your post office as the hub of your community, please use it as often as you can in the next few weeks. Use it or lose it was never a more worrying maxim.