Post office closures UK

[Linton]

I have just heard that my local post ofice is to close.It is well used and a lot of elderly residents rely on it.Instead I will have to go to the main post office and queue for a minimum of 20 minutes.Does anybody know how I can try and get this stopped?

[Letum]

I've just started working for the post office. They are going through very hard times.
Not least because they have lost a lot of customers to other firms. The PO is also
being hit hard by unusual and special competition laws.
The local closures are in no small part due to this and also the recent and continuing
upgrading of postal machines, management changes and the increased demand of
competition.

The PO used to be a public service, now it is really trapped in limbo between a public
service and a capitalist enterprise. It has all the responsibilities and fines of a public
service, but all the competition of a capitalist business.

They have been forced to make service compromises to meet the new business needs.
This is why some offices have closed.

Despite the competition, no companies are seriously opening new local post offices.
Instead they take the high profit work (i.e. mass mail delivery and parcels) away from
the PO and leave the PO with the low profit work. (i.e. mail sorting and small, local offices).

Writing to the PO won't help as they will have already made their mind up about the
impact report on closing the office. I think your best bet is to talk/write to your MP
and when the next election comes up; talk/write to the candidates and see if you can
make it a local election issue. Easier said than done of course; for you and your MP.

[The Munster]

You could also try starting a petition like the people over at Beverley but I always feel like once this Government makes a decision like this, it's like a Referee issuing a red card to a footy player; they are never going to change their mind.

[STEED]

My local one closed not because of cut backs because of armed robbers hitting the place to regularly, lucky for me there is another one a little further away and the main one up the town as well. Pensioners in this country have a hard time of it without there local post office being closed.

[CB..]

same here AFAIK my local office is going to close also..
funny thing is they have been reducing the level of service gradualy over the last year or so...can't buy my TV license there any more...and other small changes all of this eats away at the statistical numbers of people walking over the door step..so in a way depending on how you interpret the thing..making it easier to justify the closure...less and less people use it so close it...strange thing is that they have made it less and less usefull during the same period of time...

:hmm: mind you any government that can get away with restricting access to the NHS on the basis of lifestyle..smoking ..weight issues etc etc....is wandering into some pretty sketchy areas..even if they can justify it on some sort of vaguely esoteric moral grounds..it's still outside their brief to judge the populations right to public service on moral grounds...pretty sketchy stuff..if we're short on cash to fund the services then fine...we're short on cash

[jumpy]

Hehe my local PO shut almost 4 years ago now. The closest one is now a half hour walk into town, which is not convenient to visit during my lunch break at work, due to the mount of people standing in line and the lack of parking anywhere in the city centre since it has become pedestrianised. And when I'm done with work for the day, the PO is shut.

[Kapitan]

My locla post office closed 3 years ago we have one in the smallish town near us but that closes at 5pm about the time people get on the train to london to come home, they dont open till 9am either so everyone is sitting in thier nice office by then as well.

the major one is rediculos your waiting 45 minuets sometimes with cues right back over 200 yards to the parking area in town (no joke these people start cueing around 7:30am the office dont open till 9am)

[bookworm_020]

Here in Australia, alot of the smaller towns don't have a post office. Instead the newsagent can become a mini version of a post office. Thye can deal with payments for bills, deposits to your bank account and deal with the mail. They don't deliver it, but will hold it untill you come into town.

Some remote areas have a plane do the mail run! It still costs just 50 cents for letters (it's discounted as part of a subsidy that Australia Post does), but parcels cost the normal comercial rate. On one run you can even go along as a passenger (paid, of course), but you better book ahead as it's booked up to a month in advance.

[Letum]

Originally Posted by Kpt. Munson

You could also try starting a petition like the people over at Beverley but I always feel like once this Government makes a decision like this, it's like a Referee issuing a red card to a footy player; they are never going to change their mind.

See my post above. It's not the goverment's decision. The PO makes the decision.
The PO doesn't have much choice either as they are forced to shut down low-profit
offices as their competitors are taking away the high-profit work.

[Linton]

The postal strike is not going to encourage the UK public to send anything by Royal Mail!

[Letum]

Originally Posted by Linton

The postal strike is not going to encourage the UK public to send anything by Royal Mail!

The PO has asked people not to post anything over the strike period to avoid backlogs.

They process so many letters, so quickly that when the system stops, the backlogs
quickly get massive. Every time there is a backlog, the PO gets fines, even when there
is a strike. No doubt they are under a lot of pressure from the union.

On the whole the PO doesn't mind too much if the public don't send letters anyway. Public
letters are very much a low profit area for the PO, which is why they have almost no
competition for public letters.

[STEED]

Thanks a bunch postal workers for going on strike when I got something bloody important in the post which I need, now I have to waste money on a reorder and have them delivered from someone else. You better have a good reason for this strike or I am going to blow a fuse.

[bigboywooly]

The 2500 PO closures are at the Governments order
The Royal Mail wanted to close 6000

As Letum stated the PO is in decline
No more Giro payments - all made into banks as are Pensions
Car Tax avaialble online
Those above knocked a big dent on Post Office counters turnover

No need for all the POs
You can buy your stamps and packaging anywhere these days

I work in the Swindon warehouse
The only one RM has left - used to have loads all over the UK

We supply the Post Offices direct so will face a downturn in work also
Early retirements already being offered

Plus it doesnt help the RM is capped by the regulators and FORCED to take mail from its competitors - the ones who took all the lucrative business work from the Royal Mail when the monopoly was ended - at a fixed rate for RM to deliver

Doesnt take a genius to work out if you lose all the big money contracts then are forced to deliver those for your competitors it stinks

Meh

[The Munster]

Well, whichever way you look at it, it's a shame that services such as Royal Mail are negatively affected by competition and it's reached this point

Traditions of our British Heritage are gradually eroding due to money and that is a shame as well.

@BBW, I sincerely hope your job isn't affected either in the short or the long time and all this is resolved and brought to a satisfactory conclusion.

[bigboywooly]

Thanx KM

It is for the moment
Though by 2009 I believe the warehouse will be no more - is already half the size it was when I started
Thats when the lease is up
And when the new Regional Delivery Centre right next door will be open - They are extending the current mail centre next door into an RDC and closing down the same at Oxford and Reading
Prime building land = big bucks

Plus by 2009 there will be very few PO left open to supply
The crown offices are already being merged into WHSmiths with the alterations to WHSmiths stores being paid for by RM

Tis a shame
Royal Mail is obligated to deliver to EVERY house in the UK and losses money on the delivery side
Partly due to having to deliver the competitors mail also

Years of Government cash syphoning ( when RM was a civil service ) has left it backward in terms of technology
Instead of re investing the government just used the cash for other stuff

Opening it up to competition has just shown how poor it was in being able to compete

Usual story