Letter from Rt Hon Sir John Stanley MP
Thank you for your letter to me of 6 December,
inviting me to submit my views on the Post Office's consultation
on its proposed post office closures in Kent and in my constituency
of Tonbridge and Malling. I am glad to make the following points:
1. On the day that the public consultation
started, 2 October 2007, I was sent a letter by Mr Malcolm Butler,
Regional Manager of Postwatch South East, informing me that: "Eleven
weeks before the start of the public consultation, Postwatch received
Post Office Ltd's plans for this area [Kent] on a confidential
basis". No explanation was offered as to why, in a democracy,
confidential pre-consultation should be granted to a Quango and
not to elected MPs and elected local Councillors.
2. The six-week period allowed for the consultation
was grossly inadequate, giving insufficient time for the full
mobilization of opposition to the Post Office's proposals, for
effective use of powers to obtain key information under the Freedom
of Information Act, and for the organisation of all of the public
meetings that post office users would have wished.
3. In its Area Plan Proposal for Kent, the
Post Office failed to offer any public meetings on its closure
proposals. In my constituency, the only public meeting that took
place was one initiated by the Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council
at which Post Office representatives were present.
4. Key information was requested from the
Post Office by the Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council under
the Freedom of Information Act relating to the Post Office's case
for closing the Hectorage Road Post Office, Tonbridge and the
Shipbourne Road Post Office, Tonbridge, and also regarding the
capacity of the Angel Walk Crown Post Office, Tonbridge to handle
the increased demand should these two post offices be closed.
The Post Office's response to this statutory request for information
was singularly unhelpful and unhelpful and uninformative, claiming
that the "public interests", "commercially prejudicial"
and "personal data" exemptions under the Freedom of
Information Act 2000 justified non-disclosure of the information
requested by the Council. The shortness of the consultation period
made an appeal to the Information Commissioner impossible. The
Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council has confirmed to me that
it is happy to make its Freedom of Information Act correspondence
with the Post Office available to the Committee if the Committee
so wishes.
5. I myself undertook a separate, but parallel,
information gathering exercise in relation to the three Post Office
offices proposed for closure in my constituency—the two
in Tonbridge referred to above and the South End Post Office in
Edenbridge. The Minister for Postal Affairs, Pat McFadden, in
his reply to me of 15 November, revealed some very significant
information. He said that "Some 1,600 post offices have fewer
than 20 customers per day and in those branches the cost per transaction
is about £8. In addition there are about 1,000 sub-post offices
that have at least six other competing branches within a mile
of their business". Though I do not accept the Government's
policy of closing 2,500 post offices, it is now clear that this
policy could be achieved by the combination of closing post offices
that have very few customers and closing those with six or more
branches within one mile.
I subsequently tabled Parliamentary Questions
to the Secretary of State to obtain the information on:
(a) how many customers were using the three
post offices proposed for closure in my constituency; and
(b) how many other post offices were within
one mile of each other the three post offices proposed for closure.
Regrettably, Ministers refused to provide this
information themselves, though it was clear from Pat McFadden's
reply to me of 15 November that the Department have access to
it. Instead they transferred my Questions to the Managing Director
of Post Office Limited, Mr Alan Cook. His reply of 21 December
stated that the three post offices scheduled for closure in my
constituency are all attracting 500-749 customers on average per
week, ie at least five times the number of those 1,600 post offices
nationally that have fewer than 20 customers per day. It also
stated that the three post offices in my constituency scheduled
for closure have only one, or at most two, other branches within
one mile, compared with the 1000 post offices nationally that
have at least six other competing branches within one mile of
their business. I conclude therefore that the Post Office's case
for closing the three post offices in my constituency is wholly
unjustified, both on financial grounds and on the unnecessary
elimination of customer choice. I believe the same would be true
for the overwhelming majority of the 56 post offices now scheduled
for closure in Kent.
6. In deciding to go-ahead with the closure
of the three post offices in my constituency, the Post Office
have chosen to ignore the following:
(a) there was universal opposition to the closure
of each of the post offices in question, as demonstrated by the
three petitions I submitted to the Post Office against their closure,
signed in total by over 2,l300 residents and users.
(b) the closure of the Hectorage Road Tonbridge
Post Office will leave 20,000 residents in the South of Tonbridge
without a post office.
(c) the closure of each of the Hectorage Road
Tonbridge Post Office, the Shipbourne Road, Tonbridge Post Office
and the South End Edenbridge Post Office will cause significant
numbers of residents with modest incomes to incur additional expense,
will inflict personal hardship and risk on many elderly and vulnerable
residents as they struggle to get to and from, and to stand in
queues, at the remaining Tonbridge High Street Post Office and
at the remaining Edenbridge High Street Post Office and will deprive
many frail individuals of the ability to go personally to a post
office at all.
7. The Post Office has attempted to justify
their decision to proceed with the closure of the three post offices
in my Tonbridge and Malling constituency on the basis of seriously
incorrect assertions. The Post Office's "Area Plan Decision
Booklet for Kent" is factually inaccurate and grossly misleading
in relation to the capacity of the Crown Post Office in Tonbridge
and the Edenbridge High Street Post Office to handle, with a satisfactory
level of customer service, in increase in demand if the three
post office closures go ahead. On page 25 of the Decision Booklet
it is stated that "Post Office Ltd believes it [the Crown
Office in Tonbridge] has sufficient capacity to handle extra business".
This is simply untrue. The queues and the waiting times at the
Crown Office in Tonbridge, at the Angel Centre, are already intolerable
and will only be made worse by the closure of the Hectorage Road
and Shipbourne Road Post Offices. On page 32 of the Decision Booklet,
it is stated that "Post Office Ltd believes that the Edenbridge
High Street branch can cope with the expected additional business".
This is untrue. The queues and the waiting times at the Edenbridge
High Street Post Office are already intolerable and will only
be made worse if the South End Edenbridge Post Office closes.
8. The Post Office closure consultation process
in my constituency, and in Kent as a whole, demonstrated, yet
again, that Postwatch is a totally ineffectual organization for
the protection of post office customers interests.
CONCLUSION
Notwithstanding the country-wide opposition
to the proposed closures, the outcome of the Post Office's so-called
consultation in Kent was virtually identical to the original closure
proposals. Of the 58 post offices in Kent that the Post Office
proposed for closure, 56 have now been sentenced to close following
the consultation. Though the Post Office announced in its "Area
Plan Decision Booklet for Kent" on page 35 that it was
not going to proceed with the closure of Cliff's End and Hawkhurst
post offices, it announced at the same time that it was going
to propose instead, what it revealing described as £replacement
branch closures", the proposed closure of the Goodnestone
Post Office and the Lane End Post Office. It seems highly likely,
therefore, that the Post Office will end up with exactly the same
number of post offices closed in Kent after the consultation as
it proposed at the outset, namely 58.
The outcome of the consultation was, in effect,
as now revealed, predetermined before the consultation commenced.
As the Post Office now states on page 35 of the "Area
Plan Decision Booklet for Kent": "In implementing
the Programme across the UK, Post Office Ltd must meet the requirements
set out by the Government which include: The compulsory closure
of up to 2,500 branches".
I consider that only one conclusion can be drawn
from the conduct of the Post Office's consultation in Kent and
its outcome, which is that the consultation exercise was a time-wasting
and purposeless charade.
4 January 2008
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