Impact of New Forest post office closures to be investigated by survey

A SURVEY will be launched by the New Forest branch of Citizens Advice to explore the impact of post office closures on local communities to gauge the value of trying to save the service.

Citizens Advice New Forest (CANF) will collate the evidence and present it to the national CA so it can build up a UK-wide picture. That evidence will then inform whether it should lobby the government and other interested groups to save services.

Locally CANF chief executive Alison Talbot and branch member Rayner Brammall are devising the survey, and both are keen to hear from elderly residents and those that live in hard-to-reach areas.

They are seeking feedback on how the company that runs post offices, Post Office Limited, has engaged with them.

“We are trying to build up a picture of the effects of those closures and the impacts upon the New Forest,” Alison told the A&T. “We can then explore what can be done and how we as the CA can feed the information through the policy areas and influencers.

“We will work from a body of evidence, and look at the issue to see what, if anything, can be done. It’s important we do some proper research into this and a campaign will sometimes come out of research.”

The survey idea has been driven by the CA’s Rural Issues Group.

A network of independent charities across the UK, the CA is predominantly known for providing free, confidential information and advice to assist people with money, legal, consumer and other problems.

But it is also a lobbying body and in recent years has successfully campaigned for policy changes on issues such as Universal Credit, payday loans and debt.

Currently in England, around 11,500 post office branches are run by Post Office Limited –owned by the government's Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, through Postal Services Holding Company Limited.

But such local branches have come under increasing pressure in recent years; the bottom line being they struggle as a viable business proposition because they are expensive to run and the government has withdrawn funding.

Many services provided by branches can be purchased online and for cheaper elsewhere. Because of difficulties making the businesses viable, many post offices have incorporated their counters into local convenience stores.

That problem has been exemplified in the current situation concerning Brockenhurst Post Office, which is struggling to find a buyer. The Brookley Road outlet, which has two fully trained post office workers, was taken over by Elizabeth Kernaghan last year and she gave it a facelift. However, she has already resigned as postmistress because she could not make it work.

The parish council and Brockenhurst Business Association have made efforts to save it, but so far the main local supermarket outlets and pubs have resisted incorporating the facility, while other shop owners discovered their outlets are too small to feature the counter.

In Lymington, the post office was forced to downsize to cut costs, and in recent years small outlets in Hordle, Tiptoe and Barton have disappeared.

But some attempts to sustain post office services have proved successful.

Sway post office – which closed down earlier this year – is set to return in a new spot in the village, while The Happy Cheese pub in Ashurst now successfully operates a twice-weekly pop-up service to replace the nearby outlet that closed in January.

Shining examples are at East Boldre and Pilley – the latter which was turned by villagers into a successful community not-for-profit endeavour that champions all things local.

Rayner said the survey would help the CA get a “very good, accurate picture” since “little” official research had been carried out.

As to how outlets may be saved, he speculated that post offices could take on banking services to survive, since many rural banks had been axed. “That’s the sort of thing that could be really useful to people, so maybe that would help,” he commented.

The CANF survey seeks people’s views, especially if their local post office has been relocated or changes made to its opening hours or service provision. It also wants to hear from people who face longer journeys to get to a branch because of a closure.

The survey has already been sent out to a number of parish council clerks in the New Forest, and residents can have their say by emailing CANF.PO.PublicSurvey@gmail.com

Alternatively post a letter to the CANF at The Grove, 25 St John’s Street, Hythe, Southampton, SO45 6BZ.