Letter from Alan Simpson MP
NEW LENTON
POST OFFICE,
NOTTINGHAM
Thank you for having the opportunity to supply
feedback information to you about the Post Office Closure Programme
involving Post Offices in the Nottingham area. I have to say that
I am anything but happy about the outcome of the consultation
process. My criticisms focus almost entirely on the continued
decision to close the Post Office branch in New Lenton. Let me
separate my criticisms into the conduct of the Post Office and
the decision they came to.
During the consultation period the Network Development
Manager for the Post Office notionally made himself available
for representation purposes. What this did not include was any
discussion about the benchmarks against which closure decisions
would be made. The Post Office lists various factors but will
not say what weighting they give to them. They will supply details
of the number of transactions (ie customers) recorded for each
post office but will not discuss financial performance. They will
discuss location but not accessibility. They will discuss the
size of the post office but not the investment that has gone into
improvements adaptations. Once the closure announcement was made
the post office appeared to go into purdah.
I have only recently been able to get through
to the External Relations Team because some of my original emails
simply bounced back.
In relation to the specific decisions made about
closure, I attach a copy of the original letter I sent through
to the Post Office (not printed here). If there was a Post
Office to be closed in this part of my constituency this was not
the one. I attach the Branch Access Report supplied by the Post
Office during the consultations. You will see how poorly other
alternatives looked in comparison to the one chosen for closure.
Neither the Post Office nor Postwatch seem interested in this.
The Postmaster, the local Councillors and the
local Community had put in a great deal of work in expanding the
business of this post office. It is the only one in the area that
is registered as compliant with the Disabilities Discrimination
Act (in terms of quality of access). It offers parking immediately
in front of the post office, a hearing loop for those with hearing
difficulties and low level access to counters and desks for those
who are wheelchair bound. Within the local authority plan, the
intention has been to retain and develop this post office as a
hub for commercial services within the Community.
No recognition of any of this appeared in the
Post Office closure document. Their decision cited the existence
of other Post Offices a mile away from the Lenton branch. This,
however took no notice of the qualitatively different standard
of access offered in the Lenton branch. I have asked the Post
Office for comparative financial performance details of the Sub-Post
Offices under consideration for closure and they declined to make
this information available. They have this information and your
Committee may well want to press for a more detailed scrutiny
of whether the financial performance figures justify the final
pattern of post offices closed or kept open.
The closure decision of the Lenton branch has
also made a mockery of local authority planning. The work put
in by local Councillors and the local authority in seeking to
plan an expansion of services in and around the Post Office appeared
to count for nothing. It has also been an insult to the work put
in by the Sub-Postmaster and the staff and an affront to the local
community that has helped to turn the Lenton Post Office into
an expanding business rather than a contracting one.
The one Post Office branch that the consultation
exercise reversed its decision or has also caused much anger and
consternation. The reasons given for retaining the Melton Road
branch were precisely the ones made for the Lenton branch. This
point has been raised time and time again by those outraged by
the Lenton branch decision. They point out that the only difference
is that one is in the City and one outside it; one serves an affluent
area and one a relatively poor one.
Of all the closure decisions I have been asked
to look at this is the one that seems utterly unjustifiable. In
the face of a quite compelling case for retention, the Post Office
seem to have proceeded simply with a number crunching determination
upon closure.
I know you are not able to investigate specific
closure decisions. The reason I have cited this example is simply
because of the mockery it makes of government invitations to develop
more strategic area plans that involve community organisations.
Even where these work, the Post Office can just pull the rug from
under everything that has been done in order to meet a national
closures quota. It is a mockery to call such a process a genuine
consultation or an accountable public service. I hope your Committee
have more success in extracting greater details from the Post
Office than I had.
7 December 2007
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