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Positive action on post offices
• IN response to the letter (Danger is, we’ll be saying goodbye to all post offices, June 11), I can assure residents that the council has been taking positive and proactive action to engage with Post Office Ltd to support the sustainability of the post office network in Camden.
We acted swiftly to the announcement by Post Office Ltd regarding the temporary closure of the Albany Street post office. We took action straight away and wrote to Post Office Ltd to let them know our very strong concerns over the temporary closure, and urged them to be flexible in reaching a solution that would meet everybody’s needs.
I am pleased to say that they have responded positively and they have said that arrangements are underway to find a suitable alternative to the Albany Street branch, which will offer a permanent six-day-a-week service.
In the meantime, they are also talking with the Albany Street sub-postmaster to see if services can resume until a longer term solution is found.
In addition, the council is working more generally with Post Office Ltd to look for opportunities which will make sure that the post office network in Camden can thrive in the longer term.
For example, pilots have been trialled here in Camden such as the Validate scheme, which lets residents have their supporting materials checked at their local post office branch for first-time benefits claims.
I am fully aware of the poor customer service issues plaguing the Camden Town Crown Post Office and again, the council has acted decisively in raising this with Post Office Ltd.
The Deputy Leader and I wrote to Post Office Ltd earlier this year expressing our concern over the inadequate standard of customer service at Camden Town. We also met senior representatives, including the regional manager, last month to talk through these issues in detail.
That meeting, which was held in the Camden Town post office itself, was very productive and we were able to get assurances from Post Office Ltd about a range of improvement actions that are being implemented to improve customer services.
We will be keeping a close eye on the Camden Town Crown Post Office to ensure these changes generate real improvements.
I recognise that a lack of post office services is very difficult and frustrating for residents and businesses but be assured that we are doing everything we can on a range of different fronts.
Cllr Keith Moffitt
Leader of Camden Council
On same side
• YOU might not believe it from the tone of Danny Gallivan’s letter, (June 11) but all your correspondents writing about the closure of the Albany Street post office since early May have been on the same side.
We all wanted post office services to remain available for the many residents of the Regent’s Park estate who depend upon them. The hour-and-more-long queues at Camden Town post office since Albany Street was closed on May 23 are unacceptable and insupportable for many elderly and unwell customers who depend on post office services for their weekly income.
Mr Gallivan writes “this is not a party issue”, while in the very same letter doing his best to make it one by attacking council leader Keith Moffitt and by claiming, without justification, that “Mr Moffitt and his allies obviously care little about the interests of the elderly in the borough”.
In fact Cllr Moffitt has been doing his best without adopting the dubious recourse to a court injunction advocated by Mr Gallivan and Councillor Theo Blackwell.
Cllr Moffitt has met the Post Office management, and the Post Office now claims that it is recruiting a new sub-postmaster to restore six-day service to the area.
Cllr Moffitt says he is hopeful his less confrontational approach will indeed work.
I am, of course, uneasily aware that the Post Office has broken such promises elsewhere in Camden in the past (for example, those made when they closed the Haverstock Hill post office), but if service is eventually restored I hope Cllr Moffitt gets due credit for his sincere and energetic efforts.
Mukul Hira
Chalton Street, NW1
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