LISA NANDY MP: Finding new town centre Post Office site is a priority

The recent announcement that WHSmith in Wigan town centre is to close by the end of the year is another hammer blow during an incredibly difficult time for our local retail sector.

What is even more concerning is that we are also set to lose the Post Office services which were transferred to the store following the Government’s cost cutting exercise of franchising our Crown Post Offices.

Post offices are often at the heart of their communities. They allow people to access banking services, pay bills, withdraw their pension and other benefits, post parcels and access a range of central and local government services.

During this pandemic they have played a vital role in helping many of our local businesses to keep trading.

They are a lifeline for the most vulnerable people in society, but their future is in the balance with the number of post offices that are temporarily closed having more than doubled since 2013.

Two years ago, I led a debate in Parliament warning the Government about the dangers of its plans to close Crown Post Offices like the one in Wigan town centre and franchise their services to high street stores.

Dozens of MPs from all over the country queued up to voice their concerns that such a move would lead to inferior services, post office staff job losses and eventually to more branches being forced to close.

We warned that the Government was in effect overseeing a managed decline of a long established and vital part of our high street, our post offices.

MPs raised particular concerns about the plans to transfer many post office services into WHSmith branches due to the reported poor financial performance of the company and the low levels of public satisfaction with the services they provided at that time.

I warned the Government that there was no plan B to keep post offices open if the company that hosted their services had to close.

The Government Minister with responsibility for post offices gave assurances at the time that franchising was not a closure programme and would, in fact, provide a way to secure the sustainability of our post offices in the long run.

We were told that it was a Conservative manifesto commitment to safeguard the future of the post office network.

The Government and Post Office Ltd ignored local concerns and the views of the 100,000 people who signed a national petition against the closure of Crown Post Offices. They allowed one of the most precious assets to be stripped from our town.

A Crown Post Office had stood on that site for 134 years. It had survived two world wars and a global financial crash, but it could not survive a Tory Government.

Fast forward to two years later and look at where we are now. WHSmith has announced that despite being one of the few shops that have remained open during the pandemic it cannot “trade viably” from the site and will close its doors by the end of the year.

The person in charge of Wigan post office has resigned and the branch is now due to close in December with no sign of a plan to replace it.

The Government and Post Office Ltd should be ashamed of themselves. They ignored the warnings and now a vital local service is under threat.

The Government must stop the closure and franchising of our post offices and invest now to let the post office network thrive not decline even further and Post Office Ltd must make finding an alternative site for Wigan post office an urgent priority.

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