Newquay Crown Post Office reprieve
North Cornwall’s MP, Dan Rogerson, today (Tuesday) gave a cautious welcome to news from Post Office Limited that it would continue to own and manage directly the Crown Post Office in Newquay.
The Newquay branch is the only Crown Post Office in Mr Rogerson’s North Cornwall constituency, as all the rest have over time become sub-Post Offices.
The local Liberal Democrat MP says that he and his Cornish colleagues in Parliament will keep the pressure on Ministers to ensure that local Post Offices stay open. The local network has been eroded over three decades as the last Conservative government closed 3,500 Post Offices across the UK, while Labour has kept up the squeeze, closing some 4,000 in the past ten years, with a further 2,500 branches set to face the axe in the coming months.
Commenting, Mr Rogerson said:
“Successive governments have launched a series of swingeing attacks on our Post Office network, despite its importance to communities across Cornwall.
“People in Newquay will be relieved to know that their Post Office is safe – for now.
“But we will be keeping an eye on Ministers’ plans to close even more branches in the coming months. My Liberal Democrat colleagues and I are pressing a new law through Parliament that could see our local Post Offices protected, as vital centres in our villages.”
Notes to Editors:
A letter from Post Office is available here.
Research for Postwatch in 2004 showed that:
75% of those surveyed felt their local post office was ‘extremely important’
59% thought it was ‘essential to their way of life’
91% agreed it played an ‘important role in their local community’
86% felt that losing a Post Office means ‘a lot of people lose their independence’
27% found it difficult to get to another post office when their local one closed
