Councillors Agree Call To Save Threatened Local Post Offices

3.48.50pm GMT Mon 3rd Mar 2008

Vale councillors unanimously agreed a motion calling on the government to safeguard local Post Offices threatened in the rural Vale and for a representative of the Post office to attend a meeting in the Vale to explain the proposals.

Nine Post Offices in the Vale are threatened under the latest cost cutting scheme which plans to close 2,500 Post Offices across the country. Most of the Post Offices in the Vale serve rural communities and one is at Dalton Barracks, home to the families of British Forces serving overseas.

Councillors representing the communities threatened spoke on behalf of their local offices. Cllr Richard Gibson from Abingdon told the meeting that the Post Office in Wootton Road, Abingdon was kept open under an earlier review as another Post Office on Exbourne Road was shut down. Now this office is threatened, residents will have no choice but to visit the busy Post Office in Abingdon town centre.

Cllr Andrew Crawford proposed the motion. He said: "We all recognise the need to save money but the current closures proposed by the Post Office at the government's behest will hit rural communities particularly hard. Rural services have been decimated over the past 20 years and for many villages their Post Offices are all that is left. Both the government and the Post Office need to pause in their rushed plans and take a long, hard look at how communities will be affected by their remote decisions, not just numbers on a balance sheet."

He called for senior Post Office Management to attend the Vale's Scrutiny Committee to justify the closure programme, adding: "I am very concerned, not only about the closures themselves, but also the consultation process which is riddled with inaccuracy."

Seconding the motion, Cllr Jane Hanna said: "The Dalton Barracks Post Office is a important meeting place for soldiers and their families and the local community. Whilst families await the return of soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan, the Post Office is a life-line link. Many families who serve in the army now come from abroad and sending letters helps vital family links at a time of stress. If the proposals to close this Post Office are agreed, instead of a 5 minute walk to a Post Office where they are known, forces families will have to take up to half a day to travel to Abingdon and back on the local bus service, which only runs once an hour to a Post Office where everyone will be a stranger. Cutting vital Post Offices such as the one at Dalton Barracks is cutting off communities."

The Council agreed that it would invite a representative of the Post Office to attend a meeting in the Vale to discuss the plans. It is hoped that residents would be able to attend the meeting.