Post Office campaigner says branches should be expanded with more services

The Post Office is consulting connected the closure of 115 straight owned branches wrong its 11,500 subdivision network

Lord Arbuthnot, a cardinal fig successful bringing the Post Office Horizon ungraded to light, has argued for an enlargement of the Post Office web and a broader scope of services, contempt existent considerations to chopped branches.

During a House of Lords statement connected Monday, the Conservative peer, who was pivotal successful exposing the wrongful convictions of hundreds of subpostmasters owed to the Post Office's faulty accounting system, expressed his imaginativeness for the aboriginal of the institution: "I judge successful the Post Office.

"And I deliberation that the aboriginal of the Post Office is arsenic a web of indispensable hubs, dispersed passim the country, holding communities together, giving radical the accidental to bash their banking, to conscionable connected a societal basis, to interact with Government and different agencies and much services, including healthcare."

He questioned the logic down the projected closures, asking: "And that’s a aboriginal that would physique up the country’s resilience, and if that is right, should we not beryllium expanding the web alternatively than reducing it? "

The Post Office is presently consulting connected shutting down 115 of its straight owned branches wrong its 11,500 subdivision network, a determination that puts astir 1,000 jobs astatine hazard arsenic portion of a large overhaul aimed astatine expanding postmaster wage by £250m implicit the adjacent 5 years.

Lord Arbuthnot became actively progressive successful the IT issues faced by the Post Office erstwhile erstwhile subpostmaster Jo Hamilton approached him successful 2009, portion helium was serving arsenic MP for North East Hampshire. He joined the House of Lords earlier this year.

Ms Hamilton was convicted of mendacious accounting and ordered to wage the Post Office £36,000 owed to an mistake successful Fujitsu’s Horizon software. She aboriginal joined forces with different wrongfully convicted subpostmasters and met with Post Office executives, including disgraced erstwhile CEO Paula Vennells, who aboriginal returned her CBE.

Lord Arbuthnot described the concern arsenic the "greatest ungraded I person ever seen successful the transgression justness process" during the Post Office inquiry. Between 1999 and 2015, implicit 900 subpostmasters were prosecuted.

Labour concern curate Baroness Jones of Whitchurch stated that the closures were not a certainty and alternate backing options were being explored to support them open. "We are trying to find a mode to support these station offices unfastened successful immoderate mode that we can, whether it is providing antithetic services oregon nether antithetic management," she told the House of Lords.

In effect to Lord Arbuthnot, Lady Jones said: "Firstly I should wage tribute to (him) for each the enactment that he’s done connected this contented implicit the years, and cipher successful present knows the challenges amended than helium does."

"I perfectly hold with him. There is perchance a rosy aboriginal for the Post Office successful precisely the mode helium described arsenic a web of basal work proviso hubs, successful summation to the banking hubs that we person besides seen expanding."

The connection stresses the value of fiscal accuracy and highlights the Post Office's untapped potential: "So, we request to guarantee that we get the finances of this right. But I deliberation we tin each spot the imaginable of the Post Office web to supply acold much than it is doing astatine the existent time, providing the assemblage hub successful the mode that we were conscionable talking about, but besides providing nationalist work hubs."

Additionally, the connection underscores the important relation the Post Office could play for those not online: "Particularly erstwhile we determination towards a batch of services being integer and online, the Post Office volition person a relation to supply for those radical who are digitally excluded successful immoderate way, truthful that they volition person that constituent of contact, a face-to-face idiosyncratic volition beryllium capable to assistance them entree those services, truthful they bash person an indispensable relation successful the future."