Dots map community lifeblood

They are just points on a map. But each of the dots on this map represents a little part of our community's lifeblood (

).

Each dot is a post office. A vital service to its community. And a service under the gravest threat.

Rural or urban, the latest decision to axe 2,500 post offices across the country will have a massive impact on people across Shropshire and the rest of the UK.

As usual, it is the more disadvantaged members of our towns and villages who end up suffering the most.

The senior citizens of which we should be so proud are already saddled with sky-high fuel bills, weighty council tax charges and a transport system which fails them at every street corner. Now Downing Street is planning on removing another bit of their dignity.

Everyone understands that the Post Office is in crisis. That inevitably happens to a business when you strip it of all its responsibilities like the Government has done over the last decade.

The Post Office used to be a shining beacon in the community: a place for pensions, benefits, TV licences, car tax, savings accounts and passports. One by one those services have been forcibly removed or repackaged and sold elsewhere.

Sub-postmasters have opened above and beyond the call of duty to try to counter the measures, but with hours going up and profits going south they are walking in dead man's shoes.

John Williamson, or John The Post as everyone calls him, is in some respects glad to be leaving Cheswardine Post Office before he is pushed.

True, retirement age and failing eyesight have held some sway over his decision, but now is not the time to be running a post office.

It was a different story when he took over from Vera Ward on May 23, 1981.

"I was in a very privileged position in the community because people used to come to see me. I got to know them quite quickly and soon became involved in the church, the parish hall board of management and even ran the youth club for a year or so.

"Selling up has been hard because I know what the community will lose. It's sad because communities like ours thrive when everything is working well," he added.

He announced his retirement just before Christmas and is selling up to live in Newport.

"I am getting out at the right time because the future of the village sub-post office run in the way I have run it is very bleak," he said.

But while communities up and down the country may well throw their arms up in disgust, in the Treasury's eyes the figures make grim reading.

Despite subsidies of £150 million, post offices lost £111 million in 2005. Postcomm, the industry watchdog, estimates that just 1,500 out of the 8,000 rural post offices make money.

It was left to Trade and Industry Secretary Alistair Darling to deliver the news to MPs just before Christmas that the Post Office network would go from 25,000 in 1960 to just more than 11,000 by 2009.

He said the Government wanted to help the Post Office modernise, restore profitability in its main offices, invest in new products and look at innovative ways to deliver services.

With £1.7 billion at his disposal, part of this cash-fund will go on supporting some 500 new outlets, including pubs, churches and village halls and even mobile offices. Yet a lot will be spent on compensation packages similar to the 28 months' pay given to those whose post offices went in the last closure programme, which saw 2,500 offices cut between 2002 and 2005.

Mr Darling said the Post Office had an important social and economic role but added there was widespread recognition that the current size of the network was "unsustainable".

"Piecemeal closures are no good for anyone," he said. "The Post Office must plan a proper national network.

"Internet, e-mail and text-messaging have meant that people, young and old alike, increasingly use the phone or internet banking, cash point machines or direct debits to pay their bills.

"People are increasingly choosing to access services in different ways, resulting in some four million fewer people using their post office each week than two years ago."

It's no wonder post offices have been affected by the decision to pay pension and child benefit directly into bank accounts while TV licences, driving licences and passports are now being supplied online and through other retailers.

Conservative post offices spokesman Charles Hendry urged Mr Darling to recognise that if the local post office closes, often the last shop in the village closes as well. "A van for a couple of hours a week is no replacement for a post office open full time," he said. "His vision is to have fewer post offices, providing fewer services to fewer people."

Liberal Democrat trade and industry spokesman Edward Davey went even further.

"This is the death knell for thousands of local shops and rural businesses that depend on their local post office.

"Rural and deprived urban communities will feel betrayed by these mass post office closures."

Of course, nothing much will happen until March 8 when the consultation period ends and the Government starts pulling together its list of the doomed and the damned. That process will take a further three months and the first 'Closed' signs will start erupting across the county at the beginning of the summer.

The criteria for closure states that 90 per cent of the population should be within a mile of a post office. In rural areas, 95 per cent should be within three miles, doubling to six miles in remote areas.

Whether the goalposts are moved nearer the time is anyone's guess.

See also: Move to save post offices

By Social Affairs Editor Nathan Rous