Rural post offices

rose_sparky

Will the threatened closure of rural post offices affect you, if so, what will you do?

It will greatly affect me as not only is it in reasonable motoring distance, it also has good parking facilities, a must when I have armfulls of parcels.

Rockee

Having recently moved back to the grand old City of York I have found several Post Offices in the suburbs have closed over the last year or two. So, the nearest one for me means a trip into the city centre. With not much parking apart from the pay car parks, I think I will be doing less this year. Also, I have always sent items out next day, whereas now it is going to be a few days before I will be able to despatch.
I think these closures are going to have quite an effect on small sellers both in the hassle factor and costs in time and money.

birchy

Its gonna affect us all.
The rural post offices are self employed and soon the goverment is stopping subsiding them .
Yep, many will shut because it won't pay a wage for the owners to keep them open!.

Its a real shame because these offices play an important roll in the community and once they shut they are gone forever.

Good old Goverment they are destroying the last public service we have and probably end up selling it off!!

magyar

Do something about it then!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/actionnetwork/A3085571

kevinyork

I think it is appalling.

They want to close those that dont make enough money rather than looking at the overall money generated across all post offices. These are the heart of many small communities and the Post Office is often the only store and these may close up because of this.

The government should intervene but will not.

Crazychik

Is there a petition to help save the rural PO. ?

birchy

kevinyork wrote:

I think it is appalling.


The government should intervene but will not.

Without getting to political

The Goverment are just sitting on the fence and would rather plough millions of pounds of tax payers money into a country which we shouldn't be in (Iraq).

halojones

I always use my local post office, personally. So many people are going to pringing out stamps and things, but I perfer the personal touch. They know my little boy and it make me feel part of the community, I try to use my local shops too (although I cant always afford too)

At work we had a guy ring up, some company trying to sell us some printing stamp software and I said NO, we go to the post office.

martindow

I think it is important that this is not just a rural issue. Suburban Post Offices are also at risk meaning awkward trips into town centres. The network we have is so important it seems incredible that closures are being considered. They really should be considered a benefit to the community as a whole rather than something that must run at a profit. What's next? Supplements for posting to and from the Highlands or the Isle of Wight?

magyar

Martindow, you make a good point about suburban ones as well; in fact I think they tend to be more at risk.

I've listened to the news on this a lot over the last few days and I'm now of the opinion that we probably need to stop being stuck in the past. The truth is that if people used/needed Post Offices as much as they always did, then there wouldn't be a problem.

I think we need to reinvent them; probably combined with other local shops, community centres, banks, etc.

HaloJones, your point above about stamps is fine, but is a sentimental viewpoint which may not be manageable; again the problem is lack of community, so if we can recreate that, but in a more workable way, then maybe there's an alternative solution.

justpaper

nevermind rural po,. i live in the city and they closed down my nice high st po, which was running for a good 20 years ,. now i have to go half a mile,. and yes i think half a mile is a long way to walk just to post a freaking letter recorded,.