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Final bid to save post office
MP urges ‘common sense’ as pensioners speak out against closure
FOUR jobs are on the line and hundreds of pensioners will be left stranded unless a last-gasp bid to save a post office proves successful.
More than 70 concerned residents attended a meeting on Tuesday in Dick Collins Hall near Regent’s Park calling for the Albany Street post office, which serves 2,000 mainly elderly residents of the Regent’s Park Estate each week, to stay open.
Dubbed “Peter’s Post Office” – it is just around the corner from the home of Business Secretary Lord Mandelson – it is set to close on Friday as Post Office bosses refuse to allow the cash-strapped sub-postmaster who runs it to move to a system of only opening on weekdays.
Labour ward councillor Theo Blackwell said the Town Hall should take immediate legal action against the closure.
“I’m trying to get Camden Council to take out an injunction,” he added. “There should be no closure until the Post Office finds a suitable replacement.
“The grounds are that the sub-postmaster was allowed to operate in a flexible manner before. It is totally unsatisfactory that within five weeks a community facility, as valuable as this, should be allowed to close. It is exactly the sort of thing the council should get involved in.”
Managers Prabhu Shah, Dinkaer Rawal and counter staff Bipin Gosrani and Vinu Patel, who has worked at the post office for 14 years, now face the prospect of unemployment.
Prabhu said: “In April 2005 we were allowed to open just five days a week. The Post Office even came and changed the times on the safe – making them open longer in the week and closed on the weekends. Only Royal Mail has the authority to do that. Now they are saying they don’t remember that.
Sub-postmaster pharmacist Vimal added: “They agreed to change the hours three years ago.
“Now they are suddenly saying if you cannot open on Saturdays we will shut you down. If that is really the case, then why not find another suitable premises before they shut me down?”
Pensioners told the meeting how they “loved” the staff at the post office and trusted them even to take cash out of the ATM for them.
One pensioner said if she was worried about her friends she would simply go into the Albany Street post office and ask if they had been in.
Traders in Albany Street attending the meeting said losing the post office would have a severe effect on business in the street and a petition is being raised. Labour MP Frank Dobson said he had taken the case up with Adam Crozier, the Royal Mail’s chief executive.
He said last night (Wednesday): “The unanimous view is that it should be kept open – and we just need a bit of common sense.”
Cllr Keith Moffitt, Leader of Camden Council, said: “We fully recognise the vital role post offices play at the heart of our local communities. That’s why we have asked the Post Office to urgently reconsider closing Albany Street until after our meeting on Tuesday when we can have a reasonable conversation on its future. In the meantime we’re investigating whether any other businesses in the area are interested in hosting a post office counter as well as exploring how more support can be given to vulnerable residents who might be affected.” |
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