Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, if he will make it his policy to extend post offices in the existing Post Office network.

There are over 11,600 post office branches in the UK, the largest retail network in the country.

Between 2010 and 2018, Government will have invested nearly £2 billion to modernise and sustain the Post Office. This has led to the most stable network for decades, but importantly our transformation of the network has delivered an extra 200,000 opening hours a week across the country and more than 4,100 branches are open on Sundays.

On 8 November the Government launched a public consultation on the network to understand what customers and small businesses expect from branches, and this will inform the government’s next state aid application for funding the Post Office.