Post offices close in 400 villages

ALMOST 400 local post offices will be axed in the next few weeks.

The Post Office admitted the branches are to be closed as part of its cost-cutting 'network re-invention' - a bid to stem massive losses.

The High Street Crown branches lose £70m a year and the Post Office is facing further losses of £400m a year as pensions and benefits begin being paid through bank accounts.

The closures will take effect by the end of February and are the part of an audit of sub-post offices whose numbers have already been cut by 2,000 in the past two years.

Unions and the Post Office's watchdog accused it and the parent company Royal Mail of haphazardly destroying the network.

Merseyside, London, Birmingham, Derby, Manchester and Rochdale are worst affected, but country areas, including villages in Cheshire, Gloucestershire, Shropshire and Wiltshire, are also hit. Hundreds of rural branches - considered the lifeblood of many villages - have already closed and the fresh round of shutdowns will undermine the network further, with just six in ten villages left with a service.

Yesterday's news follows fury in November when it emerged that the Post Office wants to axe half of its 560 Crown branches and sell off the valuable High Street sites they occupy.

Last night, a spokesman for independent monitor Postwatch said: 'The Post Office approach lacks a strategic direction, but we know it's the way the organisation wants to do things.

'It is a salami approach of slicing things up one at a time rather than examining the network as a whole and it is confusing for the customer who is not being well-served.

'The tactics are not designed for the customer, but for the organisation.'

Colin Baker, general secretary of the National Federation of Sub-Postmasters, said: 'We fully understand and support the need to reduce the size of the urban post office network, but the approach is inconsistent and muddled.'

The Communication Workers Union said: 'There is a real lack of joined-up thinking in these plans.

'The closures of the sub-post office network are happening in a haphazard way which has not taken into consideration the closures of the Crown post offices.

'We support a vibrant network, but it is clear from public fury that the closure process has not been conducted properly and not taken into account changes in other parts of the network.'

The shutdowns have all been sanctioned by ministers, who are concerned about the mounting losses.

Sub-post offices are all run on contracts and a compensation package has been agreed with the sub-postmasters affected.

Post Office chief executive David Mill said in a letter: 'Our branches and our customers are best served by a sustainable network - not by a network of unviable businesses, closing in a piecemeal fashion with a near total loss of livelihood for subpostmasters and mistresses.'

Mr Mill said he anticipates 2,500 branches will have closed by the end of the consultation programme but there would still be a branch within a mile of 95 per cent of urban dwellers.

He added: 'It is, and always has been, our intention to maintain a strong and viable Post Office network throughout the UK.'