CAMPAIGN TO STOP POST OFFICE CLOSURES MUST CONTINUE

12.00.00am GMT Tue 5th Feb 2008

Photo l-r: Ivor Jackson, local resident; Cllr Ann Blacklock; Cllr John Whitehouse; Liz Lynne MEP; Anne Williams, postmistress; Barbara Sheppard, local resident; Nigel Rock, LibDem PPC for Kenilworth & Southam

Warwickshire Liberal Democrats have welcomed local Tory MP Jeremy Wright as the latest to back the growing campaign to save the Post Office in Kenilworth's High Street. Since the LibDems revealed last December the Post Office's secret outline plans for closures in Warwickshire, their campaign to protect much-needed local post offices has gathered momentum.

Yesterday (Monday February 4th) Lib Dem MEP Liz Lynne joined local Prospective Parliamentary Candidate Nigel Rock and councillors John Whitehouse and Ann Blacklock on a visit to meet users and staff at the Post Office in Kenilworth High Street. Liz Lynne met postmistress Anne Williams and many regular users and signed the growing petition to keep the branch open.

Liz Lynne, MEP for the West Midlands, said she was very glad to see the local Conservative MP joining the LibDem campaign to save local Post Offices:

"The Tories record on local post offices is terrible, and 3,500 were closed during their last time in government. 4,000 have closed under Labour, with another 2,500 now up for the chop. But I do welcome Jeremy Wright to our fight to save the High Street office.

"We have to keep putting pressure on the Post Office and ministers to recognise the importance of local Post Offices, by joining together to present the facts. There is a very strong case for keeping local branches open, and expanding, not contracting, the services they offer to make them more attractive and more commercially viable."

Nigel Rock, LibDem Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for the new constituency of Kenilworth and Southam, said:

"Local Post Offices are enormously important to local communities, and the High Street branch is typical. It gives an invaluable service to people this side of Kenilworth, especially the elderly and the less mobile, and also acts as a social and commercial focus for the shopping centre in this part of the town.

"I have been in touch with LibDem colleagues in other areas further advanced in the Government's closure timetable, to see how criteria are being applied there. The Post Office seem to be using a different formula from that in our consultation document, and we will try to anticipate their next move.

"They are using an assessment table, which includes among other things the number of car parking spaces outside a branch and the numbers of people with cars. Dependence on the car is hardly helping to reduce carbon emissions and seems a strange criteria to promote. We must win the battle to keep our local post offices open."

In a further twist to the timetable, this week London closure announcements were brought forward from April to 19th February, allegedly to avoid becoming an election issue. Coventry and Warwickshire Post Office closure announcements, originally due in May, were recently put back to 24 June, also conveniently out of the election process.

Nigel Rock added:

"It is unclear why Warwickshire has been prioritised after London. Why should a cloud of uncertainty hang over Warwickshire for a further four months than for London?"

ENDS

Note to Editors:

Photo l-r: Ivor Jackson, local resident; Cllr Ann Blacklock; Cllr John Whitehouse; Liz Lynne MEP; Anne Williams, postmistress; Barbara Sheppard, local resident; Nigel Rock, LibDem PPC for Kenilworth & Southam

Central government controls the closure programme through Post Office managers. Since 1999 the number of post offices in the three Council areas of Warwickshire has fallen as follows:

1999 - 121

2002 - 104

2003 - 100

2004 - 98

2005 - 87

2006 - 86

The Post Office consultation included criteria that 95% of the population should live within 3 miles (rural) or 1 mile (urban) of a branch Post Office. Applied to Warwickshire, this formula does not provide any guidance, as any single post office in Warwickshire could be closed without breaching these guidelines.