Leader
| NORTH YORKSHIRE |  | | | CLEVELAND | | | | COUNTY DURHAM | |
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Post office warning
IN November last year we
expressed the hope that
the consultation process
which had just started
over proposed post office closures
in parts of North Yorkshire
would be meaningful.
Reviewing the list of confirmed
closures announced at
the end of last week, which
looks almost identical to the
list unveiled last November,
that hope looks a very forlorn
one.
With the exception of one
suburban sub-post office in
Harrogate, the consultation
has yielded very little. It may
be because communities didn't
fight hard to keep threatened
offices. That certainly
seems to have been the case in
Piercebridge, near Darlington,
where the post office was shut
with barely a whimper, let
alone an outcry, in August last
year.
But it is clear that the Post
Office has been working to a
numbers game: the reprieve
for the post office in Harrogate
was only granted at the expense
of another post office in
Knaresborough.
Where details of the outreach
services have been divulged,
they appear to be a
poor alternative. A mobile
post office, an hour or two,
two to three days a week will
give a new meaning to that
phrase "catching the post".
There doesn't appear to
have been any willingness to
compromise. The example of
the post office at Hawnby is a
good one. It is to close despite
the offer of the couple who
run it to keep it open on a private
basis. The alternative is
an as-yet-unspecified "home
delivery option" whereby post
office services will be delivered
to the customer's door, or
to a drop-in session at an unspecified
venue.
It doesn't augur well for the
second wave of closures affecting
the DL and TS postcode
areas that were announced
this week.
A familiar pattern is emerging
of the offices in smaller villages
and suburban communities
being hit. The
consultation process runs for
six weeks. You have been
warned.
12:29pm Friday 15th February 2008
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