Post Office closures - the depressing reality of Blair's Britain

11.11.00pm UTC (GMT +0000) Fri 20th Feb 2004

Crawley is minute compared to Birmingham but in percentage terms we have roughly the same number of Post Offices facing closure. The Post Office "consulted" on closing four of them and all four will now be closed by Easter.

Lib Dems Councillor Gordon Seekings said "I had the dubious privilege of being one of the Councillors who met the Post Office people. Four facts have stuck in my memory from that meeting.

1. The only service the Post Office provide that isn't done already elsewhere as well is the selling of Postal Orders.

2. The Post Office are targeting sub-Post Offices where the guy who owns it has indicated he would like to get out of the business (there is at present almost no market in selling sub-Post Offices as businesses so I believe).

3. It was obvious during the course of the discussion that no matter what we said - and we pointed out the numerous errors in their case for closure of each sub-Post Office - it was going to close no matter what we said. :-((

4. The hurt coming from the Labour Councillors when they realised that the reason they were closing was due to their own party's policy and the support for the closure by Crawley's own Labour MP."

The Liberal Democrats would be interested in hearing of any Post Office where the decision to close has been either reversed, delayed or changed as a result of the so called "consultation".