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Have your say on the PO closures before it's too late
Hertfordshire County Council has expressed concern over the scale of proposed post office closures announced for the south of the county, in areas such as Bushey, Watford, Rickmansworth and Oxhey.
Robert Gordon, leader of the council, is calling for an early meeting with the Post Office to discuss the business case for the individual closures. He is also pressing for the period of consultation to be extended from the current six weeks.
The list released proposes 22 post office closures for the south of the county, and the current number of post offices in the area is 113.
Richard Roberts, the executive member who will be leading on this issue, said: "The plan to close 22 post offices represents a cut of one fifth of the branches in the south of Hertfordshire and that is only for one area of the county. We now have to wait until the beginning of next month (July 8) to find out how many more they are proposing to shut.
"We want to talk to the management of the Network Change Programme at the earliest opportunity particularly to review the rural post offices affected. The loss of post office facilities in a village is a severe inconvenience for local people and can even lead to the closure of the only village shop. The local public consultation period of six weeks started yesterday and that really does not give local communities enough time to decide how closure will affect them.
"We have kept closely in touch with our colleagues in Essex in their efforts to save some of their post offices threatened with closure and will want to learn from their experience. It is, of course, too early to predict the final outcome in Hertfordshire," Mr Roberts added.
The period of consultation started on June 17 and runs for six weeks until Tuesday July 29.
To have your say, send a letter in writing to: National Consultation Team, Post Office Ltd,
FREEPOST CONSULTATION TEAM (no stamp is required).
Or telephone the consultation team on 08457 22 33 44.
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