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MORE than 26 million people visit a post office every week and yet the Post Office is losing £4m a week.

If the Post Office's chief executive of 20 months, Alan Cook, and his team have insufficient imagination or expertise to ensure that there is a hefty profit from this number of customers, then I would politely suggest that perhaps they are in the wrong business?

To save money, more than 2500 post offices are due to close with as many as 5000 more under threat.

Allegedly, to achieve targets by the proposed deadline, many postmasters and postmistresses are being offered large payments to close "quietly".

Post offices are a lifeline for many of those living in rural areas and deprived parts of our towns and cities.

It is pensioners, disabled people and those living on low incomes who rely the most on their local post office for basic services and who would be worst hit by the proposed closures and changes.

The village post office, often combined with the village shop, is a vital part of the local community.

Worse still, it can't even be argued that it is the smaller unprofitable branches which are due to close; many due to close are extremely busy and profit-making.

Don't be fooled by the proposal to convert some post offices to outreach services.

Many elderly people collect their pensions from their local post office but without sufficient security and protection for staff, how can an outreach service continue to offer this facility? The hard-up Post Office will not be picking up any additional costs for essential security if it can't afford to keep the existing post office open.

Astoundingly, both the government and EU not only condone the closures but are actively encouraging them and many services have already been removed from the Post Office.

How can we reduce our carbon footprint as the government constantly urges us, if they then contradict their own advice by forcing many people into their cars or public transport, to make an expensive and unnecessary trip to the city centre just to visit the post office?

That there is a degree of secrecy about the full extent of the proposals is in no way surprising; the already precariously balanced government wants to delay the full backlash of complaints from the public until after the local elections next May.

Our villages are often welcome retreats to pensioners as our cities become filled with noisy, late night pubs and clubs.

Let us not freeze our ageing population (of which we will all be part of in time) from our villages too: let us all fight to save our rural post offices now before it's too late.

CAREN E. CLARKE, Salisbury

12:46pm Thursday 24th January 2008

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