Urgent plea to save popular Plymouth Post Office

Plymouth City Council is to urge the Post Office to ditch any plans to close the Crown branch at Mutley Plain. The branch is well used for its full range of services and accessibility for people with disabilities and parents with pushchairs.

The Post Office is looking at options for its wholly-owned 115 branches which also includes Bideford and Paignton.

The government-owned company says the post offices, which employ about 1,000 staff in total, are making a loss.

At a Plymouth City Council meeting, Cllr Angela Penrose’s motion to write to Nigel Railton, Post Office Limited’s interim chair, expressing the council’s dismay at the potential closure and requesting that the plans are reversed was supported.

Cllr Penrose (Lab, Compton) said she recognised that the Post Office had embarked on a new policy aimed at supporting and enhancing the role of the subpostmaster after the Horizon Scandal when 700 subpostmasters were wrongly accused of theft, fraud and false accounting, and that there were other franchise models being developed.

But she added that the “essential nature of a Crown Post Office and the community resource it represented should be retained.

“Efforts are being made to revitalise high streets all over the country and this does away with these efforts.

“It is a major asset, contributing to the viability and popularity of Mutley Plain. Traders are striving to keep area relevant and thriving.”

The councillor said the branch was well used by all local residents including young people and students and any time you went in there was a “substantial queue”.

The nearest Crown branches are at Crown Hill and in the city centre, but are not so accessible, said Cllr Mary Aspinall (Lab, Sutton and Mount Gould).

This one had parking nearby, access for wheelchairs, and flexible space so more service points could be opened when it was busy. The staff were also very knowledgeable, she said.

The councillor praised smaller post offices but they did not offer the full range of services that the Crown Post Offices provided.

“Having this one in Mutley makes it so much easier for residents. We want to support Mutley Plain being a local shopping centre.”

The Post Office says it wants to move forward from past mistakes and for the benefit of all postmasters.

Mr Railton recently said: “We have had long held a publicly-stated ambition to move to a fully franchised network and we are in dialogue with the unions about future options for the directly managed branches.”

He said a move to franchises would result an additional £250 million extra revenue to subpostmasters.

There are 11,000 post offices across the country which are franchises.