Countryside Alliance - Post Office consultations "undermined communities"

Friday, 13 November 2009 12:00 AM

The Countryside Alliance has agreed with Public Accounts Committee's report into the 2007 Post Office closures which has branded the Government's consultations "window dressing".

The Public Accounts Committee has published a report which is scathing of the Government's handling of Post Office consultations and closures. In 2007/08, the 14,000 network lost 2,500 branches due to a lack of "economic viability". The Countryside Alliance ran a campaign to save rural branches and mobilised thousands of supporters to hold rallies, take part in consultations and make the point that "the value of Post Offices goes far beyond the financial."

The Public Accounts Committee report concludes that: "The aim of a consultation process is to allow stakeholders the opportunity to contribute their views at a time when they could have some effect on the final decision. However, only a small percentage of people were even aware of the consultation, and because the total number of closures had already been determined, local concerns about the scale of the Programme were in effect ignored. There is a key danger that the whole process of consultation will be brought into disrepute if key questions such as this have already been determined. In the early stage of the consultation process only 18% of people had been aware that a consultation was going on in their local area."

Countryside Alliance Chief Executive Simon Hart commented: "We welcome the Public Accounts Committee's forthright stance as it reflects many of the concerns we held during the consultation process in 2007. The Government and Post Office Ltd failed to recognise that the role of the community Post Office goes way beyond economics, and in doing so undermined many rural communities by closing their branch.

"We were deeply concerned at the time that the local consultations were a sham and inadequately conducted, and our view has certainly been borne out by this report. We must now look ahead to the future of the network; in his speech to the Labour Party conference the Prime Minister pledged to increase the role of post offices in providing financial services. It is vital that we secure a viable network which will ensure that our rural communities maintain their heart.

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