IN recent weeks I have been speaking to the owners of local post offices in West Devon. It is increasingly clear that the government's much trumpeted scheme for saving rural post offices is failing. There are also worrying signs that the government has no real commitment to the scheme.
Now that customers must have a bank account to receive their pensions and benefits, fewer and fewer are availing themselves of the counter services of our small post offices.
Worse still, the post office card accounts that were meant to enable people to keep their business with their local post office are being actively or tacitly discouraged by the need to wade through a mound of paperwork — around seven separate communications from the Department of Work and Pensions — before they are able to get their benefits paid into them.
In addition, would-be customers are grilled by officials as to why they are asking for a post office account when they could be opening a bank account!
The forms themselves are confusing, leading many who wish to open a PO card account to put down their bank's details instead. Finally, the last straw for more than a few struggling post offices in West Devon may be the recent cruel reduction in fees paid to them for each transaction.
It is vital that we support our local post offices. But it is equally vital that the government gives these crucial rural institutions a fair deal.
Geoffrey Cox
Prospective parliamentary Conservative candidate for West Devon and Torridge