CAMBRIDGE POST OFFICE CLOSURE 'UNACCEPTABLE'

Responding to today's news that Cambridge’s city centre post office is one of the 115 branches that the Post Office proposes to close, Lib Dem City Centre councillor Tim Bick said:

“The Post Office proposed this a few years ago and we successfully opposed it then. I am sure we will oppose it again now. It’d be another nail in the coffin of high street public services, which the council itself is currently threatening to reinforce by cutting back public toilets. There is today no hint of the existing post office dying: it is extremely well used, indicating that it continues to meet an important need. The proposed alternative last time was an obscure location upstairs within WH Smiths, which wasn’t unacceptable then and won’t be if that’s the suggestion again now.

“This aspect of today’s announcement doesn’t seem a great way of the Post Office regaining the public trust it has lost after the recent terrible scandal.

“Franchising to independent postmasters who also operate local shops is clearly a good approach to providing the post office service in neighbourhood localities and more sparsely populated areas. Any better deal for those postmasters after everything they’ve been through recently is to be welcomed; but that model doesn’t seem appropriate or necessary in a busy city centre which has a busy Crown Office. I don’t see a reason why one needs to traded off against the other. It is anyway very hard to regard big corporates like Smiths and Tesco in the same way as independent postmasters.”