How Post Office doors are being shut

The full scale and impact of Post Office closures in London is revealed today.

Royal Mail admits that 300 sub-post offices in the capital have shut or have been earmarked to close in the past two years. It also confirmed that a new round of cuts is being considered with main branches now being targeted.

And a damning report to council chiefs warned that closures can blight entire neighbourhoods, with poor and vulnerable users hardest hit.

The current two-year programme, which is almost at an end, has targeted branches run by sub-postmasters.

The second, if it goes ahead, will focus on Crown Post Offices, owned and managed by Royal Mail.

A spokesman for the organisation did not deny claims that 200 Crown Post Offices may close nation-wide, slashing the network from 560 to about 360.

He said: "The directly managed network lost more than ?70 million last year and we can't sustain losses at this level."

MPs and campaigners accuse Royal Mail of misleading the public.

They said it had justified the closure of sub-post offices claiming customers could switch to nearby Crown branches, which may now also be axed.

Kay Dixon, chairman of London Postwatch, said: "We have been approving sub-post office closures on the basis that the business would move to main branches. If these reports are true, it means that all the public consultations, all the discussions, will have been based on incorrect information."

Karen Buck, chair of the London group of Labour MPs, said: "My colleagues and I have been horrified by the scale of the closures and particularly at the manner in which these successive waves have been presented. We feel that we were not able to properly evaluate the whole programme."

New Royal Mail figures show that, since November 2002, 272 London branches have either shut or been told they will close. A further 24 are due to close pending the result of consultation, taking the total to 296.

It is set to rise above 300 when plans for the final district, Romford, are unveiled this week. Town hall chiefs have complained that they have been consulted late. A report by officials at the Association of London Government says that closures "particularly affect disadvantaged communities and groups".

It adds that the closure of a local post office "could in turn influence the wider social, economic and physical regeneration of an area. The closures will obviously impact on the most disadvantaged."