Post office closures `Ripping heart from communities'

The Government is ripping the heart out of rural and urban communities by allowing the wholesale closure of thousands of post offices, the Liberal Democrats said today.

As tens of thousands of countryside campaigners took to the streets of London fighting for rural rights, MPs and councillors took to the stage at the Liberal Democrat conference in Brighton to call for an end to the closure of post offices.

With the proposed closure of 3,000 post offices in urban areas, MPs David Heath (Somerton and Frome) and Vincent Cable (Twickenham) said it was time the Government listened to the protests.

Communities were united in anger, Mr Heath told delegates, warning: “The British people want and need British postal services that deliver in every sense of the word.”

The Government was rushing “headlong” into plans to pay pensions and benefits direct into bank accounts which would result in already struggling post offices in thousands of communities being forced to close.

“Let’s be clear, every time a small post office closes that community loses some of its heart,” he said. Communities were losing a friend, Mr Heath added.

“This Government is on a warning. There are many, many people in this country who value their post office. They have been told it’s safe. I hope it’s true but I doubt it.”

Mr Cable said the crisis was “avoidable” but the Government was instead actively encouraging people to open bank accounts _ and turn them away from community post offices.

“The battle to save post offices is an issue that affects everyone from rural, suburban and inner city areas as well.”

Backing the call, David Hennigan, of Manchester Gorton, predicted the closures would put elderly pensioners at risk, by forcing them to travel further afield to cash their pensions.

He feared the elderly would be vulnerable at Christmas when they collected double pensions. “It will leave them vulnerable to crime,” he said. “The Government is trying to rip the post office out of communities.”

Delegates voted overwhelmingly in favour of two motions urging the Government to protect rural post offices and the universal service obligation, which protects less profitable services, as well as giving people the choice of collecting benefits and pensions in cash at post offices.