The following is the text of my letter to the ‘Consultation Team’ on Post Office closures. Please feel free to use this text in whole or in part in any response that you make (which I hope many will).

Your views can go direct by email to the address immediately below and we have until Monday August 4^th to get these in. So hurry - time is running out!

To: consultation@postoffice.co.uk

Dear Sirs,

I write as a City Councillor for Hall Green ward and as part of the local public consultation. I must express the very gravest concerns at your proposed closure of the Robin Hood Post Office at 1537 Stratford Road, Hall Green, Birmingham B28 9JA. I wish to bring a number of important facts to your attention.

This excellent post office serves a wide and diverse area providing an outstanding and much needed service to the community. Given the number of elderly people in the area served by this office and the fact that it is the local office for most of the nearby Pitmaston Estate (which was identified as a target area for NRF funds due to deprivation), it is one which I thought would be secure.

Certainly, if Robin Hood Post Office were to close it would be a very severe blow to all the pensioners, vulnerable people and many others who depend on the service that it provides. Closure would undermine the viability of the local parade of shops in which Robin Hood Post Office stands. We have already seen elsewhere in Hall Green the impact on a local parade in the case of your earlier closure of Highfield Road Post Office.

I understand that a member of your staff will have visited the locality of Robin Hood Post Office. I have reviewed the ‘Branch Access Report’ and I have to say that there are significant questions about such information as this scant document contains. For one thing, I understand that the post office in Baldwins Lane that you identify as an alternative to Robin Hood, is not in practice open throughout the times that are stated in the Branch Access Report.

Additionally, I would emphasize that there are no longer any banks in the area. No doubt the banks carried out an access exercise of their own without taking the declining number of post offices into consideration. The effects of this are amplified by the fact that the post office network is thinned out unacceptably already. Furthermore, for the ‘alternatives’, any measure of capacity that you employ in this decision should relate to the capacity at peak times rather than being an average capacity.

Then there is the question of buses. Such connections as exist today may very well not be there tomorrow. We have had to fight long and hard to prevent threatened cuts by the bus company. Bus services are also driven by bottom lines. The local residents are seen as profit fodder. You will claim that you often hear this point about bus services. That does not make it invalid and yes, it should be a concern that you weigh. Disconnected analyses are invalid.

What also does not show up in the half page evaluation of the Branch Access Report is the number of elderly people living alone and with no means of private transport to the proposed alternatives. A round trip walking distance of up to two miles may be attempted by some residents over eighty (of whom there are already many) very much at their own risk.

Furthermore, the criterion of being within a mile for a certain percentage of residents does not address the situation in which many pensioners and vulnerable people find themselves. There is another factor that makes the criterion of distance both suspect and dangerous. This is also the possibility that some of the other remaining post offices in Hall green will close of their own accord due to the erosion of their businesses by the enforced changes and withdrawal of business. All of this means that a postal service needs to continue at the Robin Hood Island.

There is very great public concern and opposition to the threatened closure of Hall Green’s Robin Hood Post Office - as you will know from the very extensive petition, signed by thousands of local residents, that has already been submitted to you as part of the local public consultation.

By way of reinforcement, at a recent meeting of the Hall Green Ward Committee, I moved a resolution to the following effect: “Hall Green Ward Committee recognises the vital role of Post Offices serving the local community and as key businesses in local centres and calls for a thorough reconsideration of the closure programme so as to ensure continuity of postal services from Robin Hood Post Office, 1537 Stratford Road, Hall Green.” This view is very widely supported in the local community.

As popular post offices are closed down, more people are inevitably forced to use direct cash payments. This may cut costs for the Treasury, but the fact that it makes life much harder for pensioners and many others seems to be neither here nor there for you or for the Government. But it should be - and you have an opportunity to recognise this by withdrawing the treat of closure that is hanging over Robin Hood Post Office.

I have to say that many people hold serious doubts about the genuineness of the ‘consultation’ on the proposed post office closures and the validity of the calculations that underlie the decisions that seem to have been made. There must be the realistic possibility of reconsideration of these proposals and this scope must be fully exercised if the consultation is to be genuine.

On the question of the validity of the exercise, the House of Commons own Business and Enterprise Committee found that the post office network is actually subsidising Royal Mail’s letter delivery - run as a separate business in the tangled structure within which post offices now have to operate.

Also on the question of the validity of the proposals, people are very surprised when busy post offices such as Robin Hood are faced with enforced closure. I understand that you as an organisation want to manage a smaller number of post offices centrally and that your central administrative costs are used to justify the closure of some profitable offices. But I also understand that you allocate your central costs on a per-office basis rather than according to turnover. This will inevitably result in a false measure of the central saving when a busy office such as Robin Hood is closed. So despite the pain caused, neither you nor the Government will make the reductions in cost that you are claiming.

In view of the crucial importance of this issue in the potentially affected neighbourhoods and the substantial points made above, I trust that having read this letter and considered the arguments, you will reverse your decision to close the Robin Hood Post Office in Hall Green. This would not only bring great relief to the surrounding area but would undoubtedly also increase the standing of The Post Office and result in enhanced business in the future.

I trust also that you will acknowledge this letter and respond to the arguments with due despatch.

Yours sincerely,

Councillor Michael Wilkes

Hall Green

Birmingham