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The Royal Mail has made an eleventh hour attempt to avert the first national postal strike in seven years. It has invited union leaders to talks on Tuesday at Acas, the conciliation service.

Within the next few days the Communication Workers Union will ballot 160,000 postmen and women on industrial action over pay and job cuts. Dave Ward, the deputy secretary general of the CWU, is expected to use any mandate from his members to stage an all-out strike. The strike would come at a crucial time for the Royal Mail, which lost GBP600m last year and is faced with the threat of competition in the postal market.

Up to a fifth of the post offices in Glasgow and Edinburgh could close through the speeding up of a rationalisation plan, the Post Office confirmed yesterday.

But a spokeswoman said no firm decisions had yet been reached on numbers. She described as “speculative” reports that the axe could fall on up to 25 of the 140 offices in Glasgow, and up to 20 of the 101 in Glasgow, by the end of the year.

The Post Office announced plans last year to rationalise its 9,000 urban post offices across the UK, of which about 700 are in Scotland. The rationalisation could see 3,000 closures, of which the Scottish total is expected to be 200 250.

Some parts of Glasgow and Edinburgh are said to have six or seven post offices within a mile of each other.

The spokeswoman said: “Earlier this month the Post Office Ltd wrote to MSPs and local authorities to tell them that rather than look at post offices on an individual basis, we were going to step up the pace and look at them on an area basis.

“The aim is to ensure a vibrant network of post offices, and that 95 per cent of people in urban areas will live within a mile of a post office branch.”