Nick Bourne AM

On Tuesday evening I had a meeting with the Post Office in Wales to discuss a variety of Post Office issues.  Our Group was also represented by Alun Cairns, Mark Isherwood, William Graham and Richard Hazlewood.  

To my way of thinking the Post Office performs a marvellous function.  I have much sympathy with them on the fact that they have to compete with other providers now and at the same time have to offer a universal service within the UK at uniform prices - something I wholly approve of but can only be done with cross subsidies from other services.  

I do raise with them the issue about closures of rural Post Offices as these have been coming through thick and fast in my own area and elsewhere.  Just this week Lawrenny has been under the spotlight in Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire, and recently Pumsaint in Carmarthenshire also closed.  The problem relates very often to the government.  It recognises the importance of the network of Post Offices, or so it says, but then there is a withdrawal of government or quasi government services like renewal of passports, renewal of television licences, and so on.  It strikes me we have to look at imaginative ways of providing the network.  Sometimes this will be mobile Post Offices, sometimes it will be Post Offices in unusual locations like Churches or Pubs. I have no problem with that but what I do think is that the Post Office provides a unique service and should not be judged just on economic grounds.  

It is a very useful gathering and we always meet up with the Post Office just before Christmas so we know that Christmas is not far away when we have these meetings.  I personally find them very useful.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 29th, 2006 at 5:41 pm and is filed under News from the bay. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.