Parliamentary candidate Sarah Owen addresses the meeting.

Opposition to PO plans grows

Post Office representatives were left in no doubt about the grassroots opposition to plans to find a retail partner for Hastings main post office at a public meeting. The meeting sparked the formation of an action group which plans to meet the proposed partnering initiative head-on. Nick Terdre reports.

Some 65 local residents and post office employees attended the meeting at the White Rock Hotel on Monday 29 April. When one of the speakers asked how many present were in favour of the plans – which would see the dedicated post office building shut down – no hands were raised.

So it was a thankless task for Roger Gale, general manager with Post Office Ltd, and the colleague who came to support him, to try and explain the reasons behind the proposal, which would see post office services offered from within the premises of a local retailer.

The Post Office made a loss of £121 million last year, about one third of which was down to the crown – or main – branches, Mr Gale said. At present it is kept going by a £180 million subsidy from the government, but by 2015 it has to be able to demonstrate to the government that it is on the way to breaking even. Finding a retail ‘partner’ helps to reduce the losses.

However, there was little sympathy for the Post Office’s plight either from the public or the other speakers – Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Hastings and Rye, Sarah Owen, council leader Jeremy Birch and Andy Furey of the Communication Workers Union.

Broad front

Opposition on the political front is not confined to Labour – Tory MP Amber Rudd was not at the meeting due to prior commitments but told HOT she opposed the plans and had started a petition against them on her website. Sarah Owen also has an online petition going which had attracted some 4,100 signatures, she told the meeting.

When the meeting was thrown open for contributions from the floor, local resident Ian Stewart stood up brandishing a thick sheaf of papers which he explained was a petition of some 750 signatures which he and several colleagues had collected outside the post office in the previous couple of weeks. The petition reads: “This is our Post Office and it’s going to stay open!”

Ian later told HOT that after the meeting he and several others had decided to form the Post Office Users Action Group to tackle retail partnering head-on. Their first action will take place on Thursday 9 May when they will assemble at WH Smiths in Priory Meadow – the retailer hosts post office services in branches elsewhere.

Here they will ask to speak to the manager, to whom they will explain that they don’t want to see post office services moved into a local store. “We must make sure that possible partners know that the people of Hastings don’t want any partners for the post office,” Ian told HOT. He hopes that other local residents will turn up to support the action, he said.

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