Four Bath Post Offices set to close

Four Bath Post Offices are down for closure and Liberal Democrat Councillors with threatened Post Offices in their wards are campaigning with Don Foster MP against the Government plans.

“We urge all residents to support the campaign to save Bath’s Post Offices, and to sign the petition on our website.”

http://campaigns.libdems.org.uk/savebathspostoffices
This is a backward step which does nothing to help local people. We call on the govt to reconsider.”

Don Foster MP said:
“I am concerned that the social importance of Post Offices is being ignored by the Government. These closures do not take into account the knock-on effect on other shops in the local community. It will be the elderly and vulnerable who are most affected by these closures as they may struggle to travel the extra distance to important services”.

Bath & North East Somerset Councils Enterprise and Economic Development overview and scrutiny panel looked a Post office closures on Tuesday 18th May where only two conservatives out of the three on the panel Bothered to turn up to the meeting whilst the three liberal Democrats on the Panel made positive contributions. We wonder if the conservatives really care about post offices as the last time that they were in power they closed over 3,000 of them.

Some of the Comments made by Liberal Democrat Councillors on the Panel yesterday were.

“The consultation on Post Office closures is less about democracy, and people’s wishes, and more about accountancy. At the end of the day, what residents want doesn’t really matter. The Post Office is looking at this purely financially and not from the point of view of the community they’ll just railroad their decision through.”

“We are quite concerned that this is not the final programme. When the Government subsidy to Post Office Ltd runs out in 2011, it is clear that another massive round of Post Office closures may occur. The Council needs to consider its social responsibilities to all the communities it serves as the Labour Government is obviously neglecting its duties.”