Rural Postal Services: Sustainability Debate
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Alan Mak
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Rural Postal Services: Sustainability
Alan Mak Excerpts(6Â months ago)
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Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the sustainability of rural post offices.
It is a pleasure, as ever, to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie. Balintore is a coastal village 595 miles from London and seven miles from my home town of Tain. It has no bank, a fair number of elderly residents and a bus service that is, to say the least, infrequent. When the people of Balintore and the neighbouring villages of Shandwick and Hilton heard that the local Spar shop would no longer provide a post office service, they were downcast, to say the least. There seemed no way to avoid the complete disappearance of the local post office.
Then, step forward one Maureen Ross. Maureen, a Seaboard village local, has long been a dynamo of community work. True to form, she did not disappoint. Maureen dared to ask whether the post office could be part of the local community hall, the Seaboard Memorial Hall in Balintore. The hall is already much used by the community and is a provider of excellent meals and coffee.
Maureen, in true form, approached the Post Office bosses with that innovative proposal. Fast forward to today, we have a successful local Balintore post office, open five mornings a week. Pensions are collected, bills are paid and cash withdrawn. It is the place where older folk can go about their day-to-day business and stop to have a cuppa and a chinwag.
Alan Mak (Havant) (Con)
I am delighted to hear about the success story in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. When a rural post office closes, as he mentioned, a post box often remains in the vicinity. Residents will be keen for the post box to remain functional, as is the case at Eastoke post office in Hayling Island in my constituency. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that keeping post boxes functional, even where the post office has closed, can help make post offices and postal services more sustainable and successful in the long term?
Jamie Stone
Indeed, the hon. Gentleman makes a wise point. A final point on Maureen Ross: she has protected a fundamental pillar of that community. It is no surprise that a few weeks ago she was elected as a member of the Highland Council. She recognised that a network of local post offices is integral to the social fabric of our nation.