Post Offices (Islington)

Emily Thornberry Excerpts

Tuesday 29th October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) for securing this debate, which is important for Islington. I am delighted, Mr Dobbin, to serve under your chairmanship today.

What has been happening to our post offices in Islington is a sorry story, and I shall start with the Almeida street site. It is a large site in the heart of my constituency. It is bounded on one side by Upper street, and surrounded by Moon street, Milner place and Gibson square. It is a very large development area. The Post Office somehow managed to sell the site without securing a proper site for another post office. It kept the post office on Upper street, but is only renting it back. The post office does not have disabled access and its remaining time on that site is limited. It is a Victorian building; it has been there for ever; it is in the heart of my patch; and it seems that it will just go. That is the first problem.

The post office on the Upper street site needs to move. We accept and understand that, but the question is, where will it move to? The other big Crown post office in my constituency, which borders my hon. Friend’s constituency, is the Highbury Corner site. As hon. Members have heard, it is only temporary, so the council offered £2 million and a site for a Crown post office across the road. In its wisdom, Post Office turned that offer down. Having sold off one site and not secured another, and having turned down £2 million that the council had offered, it is telling us that it does not know where to move to or what it can do.

We are told that the post office can move to a site opposite the garage on Upper street by the town hall. I have said several times that one reason why it needs to move is the lack of disabled access at the Upper street site. Yet, I understand that on the site that it is moving to the door is of limited size because it is in a conservation area. It will not be able to have double doors that open electronically, which is the ideal for any new site, particularly when it serves a large disabled and elderly population, as it does. Thankfully, people today do not have ordinary wheelchairs; they have electronic wheelchairs and can get about. I have grave doubts about disabled access at the new site, which the post office is moving to, not least because of the lack of disabled access now, and I wonder whether there will be disabled access for everyone or only some people. If the Post Office expects someone in an electronic wheelchair to push open a door, it is on another planet; it will not work.

There has been one bad decision on the Almeida site and another on the Highbury Corner one. In addition, the council has not given up. It is saying, “Okay, you have refused our £2 million; we are now in a time of austerity and the £2 million has been spent elsewhere. But guess what? We are prepared to give you £750,000 for another site at Highbury Corner.” The gauntlet is down, but the Post Office will not accept that offer either. The council has also said. “In the meantime, if you are trying to build another post office, we can provide you with accommodation.” The council has offered accommodation near empty council buildings on Upper street, but the Post Office does not seem to want to move there either. How much more can it try to destroy its business than it has done over the past five or 10 years in Islington? If I sound fed up, Mr Dobbin, you should hear what my constituents have to say.

The situation is not hopeless. Some post offices work perfectly well. I fought hard to save Essex road post office, as some of the Minister’s officials know, and we secured its future. It has been refurbished and has just reopened with extended hours, five counters and disabled access. It will do very well and it is exactly the sort of post office we want. If that can be done in one corner of my constituency, why can it not be done in its backbone, where we need a Crown post office that will function properly.

My last complaint—I have more, but I am being selective—is that even if a new Crown post office is opened opposite the garage, whether it has disabled access is a moot point, and there will be only seven counters. There are seven counters at the current post office in Upper street and at Highbury Corner. The Post Office intends to try to put a quart into a pint pot with the same number of counters at Upper street. People already queue outside in the rain at both Highbury Corner and Upper street post offices. People do not go to the post office because they do not have 45 minutes to queue. The Post Office is cutting off its nose to spite our face. It must get a grip and show some leadership and vision. It must move on and build a proper Crown post office on Upper street that is worthy of the people of Islington.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jo Swinson]

Obviously, all operational matters are for discussion between Post Office Ltd and the relevant unions, but longer opening hours are welcome and could be implemented in the existing Crown post office network. With the post office local and the post office main models, longer opening hours are being rolled out in the rest—and, by far, the bulk—of the network. The investment that is being put into those branches is being used to secure longer opening hours as part of an overall new negotiation and deal with those sub-postmasters. They will receive investment and a new way of working with their branch, but the quid pro quo for that has to be that the opening hours are enhanced, which has an additional customer benefit.

We know that customer satisfaction statistics for the new post offices that have been opened show that customer satisfaction is significantly increased. The hon. Lady mentioned the newly refurbished post office in Essex road, which she opened just last Friday. I am sure that she found—as I have, when I have opened post offices in my constituency and have been to others around the country—that the feedback from customers shows that they are incredibly welcome. What often happens is that a post office, which perhaps was dark, cramped-looking and not fit for the 21st century, is taken and turned into something that is much more akin to modern shopping and retail environments, and it will therefore attract more customers and be more successful.

[Emily Thornberry]

The Minister is right, and may I plug Essex road post office? It is a fantastic post office and well saved. However, why is the Essex road part of my constituency fit for a proper office, yet we cannot get one on the A1, which is the main street that goes through my patch?

[Jo Swinson]

Obviously, the post office network is complex, with a wide range of outlets across the country. In working out the best locations for all those post offices, Post Office Ltd has to take into account a wide range of factors. The post office that the hon. Lady recently opened in Essex road is under a different kind of model of ownership from those at Highbury and on Upper street, which are part of the Crown network. The Essex road post office, which has become a main office, is obviously not part of the Crown network.

Most customers would be blissfully unaware of the different structures of different parts of the network. However, of the some 11,800 branches that exist now, about 370 are part of the Crown post office network and therefore directly operated by the Post Office. The vast majority of post offices are run as sub-post offices either through franchise agreements, such as through multiple chains—WH Smith has been mentioned, but there are many convenience store multiples—and also by many individual, independent sub-postmasters who run their own post offices in their communities, effectively, as their small businesses. Trying to manage such a diverse network brings its own challenges.

In particular, I want to turn to some challenges facing the Crown part of the network. Numerically, about 370 post offices out of 11,800 is a small part of the network, but none the less, it has been responsible for a significant proportion of the network’s losses in recent years. Of the post offices that we are discussing today, those on Holloway road, Highbury corner and further down Upper street are in the Crown network. In the last full financial year, that part of the network sustained losses of £37 million, which is a third of the overall losses for the whole network. Those 370 branches are, by and large, in busy town and city centre locations, and that situation is unfortunately not sustainable. Ultimately, any retailer that was losing significant money on branches in such prime locations would be looking seriously at how to cut costs to ensure that that part of its network and operations were, at the very least, breaking even.

--- Later in debate ---

[Emily Thornberry]

The Minister is being generous in allowing me to intervene again. Is she able to inform us how much money the Post Office made when it sold off the Almeida site? Surely, that could subsidise post offices in Islington until the next century.

[Jo Swinson]

As I am sure the hon. Lady will understand, I do not have that figure in front of me, but I will endeavour to find that information out from Post Office Ltd and ensure that it is forthcoming to her, if that is possible within the bounds of commercial confidentiality. However, the overall picture for the Post Office in terms of revenue is that it is not possible to continue operating a Crown network that has the kind of losses that have been sustained over many years. That is why we are transforming the Crown part of the network with £1.34 billion of Government investment until 2015. We also want to ensure that we put the Post Office on a firm footing and eliminate the losses in the Crown network by 2015. That is only fair to the taxpayer, who is also providing significant subsidy, and it is also about good commercial practice.

The franchise plans are part of the overall plan to get the Crown network to break even. We have chosen 70 individual locations that Post Office Ltd thinks are less likely to be able to become commercially viable without franchising. Those proposals have been put out for franchise opportunities. The hon. Member for Islington North mentioned Archway, which is not in the list of 70, so there are no plans to franchise that at the moment. He also mentioned Finsbury park—I am not certain whether that is a Crown office or a different model.