Tag: Post Office

The shortlist for the 2006 Best Post Office® Awards has revealed a host of Post Office® branches willing to go the extra mile for their customers and communities.

The shortlists for three special awards categories, which recognise Post Office® teams which go beyond the call of duty, show outstanding community spirit or real innovation in providing Post Office® services, include a number of branches which have literally offered a lifesaving service to their customers.

The teams at Barnhill near Dundee and South Reddish in Cheshire are just two branches that have provided emergency assistance to customers who have been taken ill, and have been praised for saving their lives.

Other branches shortlisted include Tarbolton in Ayrshire which, as well as running a host of charity fundraising activities, also opens its doors on Christmas Day to ensure everyone in the area can come together to share some Christmas cheer. Perhaps the strangest offer of hospitality was from staff at Bonymaen in West Glamorgan who took care of a four foot iguana when its owner needed to find a new home.

Britain’s post office network could vanish unless the Government acts to protect it, MPs have warned.

Sub-postmasters feel “betrayed” by the decision to axe the Post Office Card Account, which has threatened their livelihood, according to the Trade and Industry Select Committee.

The committee is chaired by Mid Worcestershire MP Peter Luff (Con) and members include Julie Kirkbride (Con Bromsgrove) and Rob Marris (Lab Wolverhampton South West).

Post Office Card Accounts were introduced when the Government began paying benefits and state pensions directly into customers’ bank accounts.

They are the equivalent of a very basic bank account, designed to ensure people who did not have traditional bank accounts can still receive their money.

However, the card accounts are now set to be axed, hitting the income of many post offices.

The MPs said they were especially concerned about the impact on commercially unvi-able parts of the network and the implications Post Office branch closures would have on their wider communities.

Britain’s 14,300 post offices are fighting for their very survival. The Government is starving the network of vital funding in a move that could leave it with as few as 4,000 branches in the next decade. But many communities are putting up a fight. Toby Walne visited the Isle of Wight to find how the bestserved region in the country is aiming to keep it that way.

They are a belligerent bunch on the Isle of Wight. Faced with a Government that seems determined to smash Britain’s post office network, the islanders have fought back by issuing a ‘unilateral declaration of independence’, calling for their post offices to be removed from Royal Mail control.

And there is good reason to fight. The island has 52 branches serving 120,000 people, which is one for every 2,308 residents and almost double the national average.

But that does not include the 2.6 million ‘grockles’ tourists – who holiday on the island every year and often use the post office network. Yet the Government is poised to destroy this thriving network, allowing the closure of 35 branches, leaving only 17 post offices by 2010.