7:10am Thursday 30th October 2008
EVERY Worcestershire post office earmarked for closure in the summer will have to shut up shop over the next couple of months.
The decision follows a public consultation that, as far as we can see, was little more than a box-ticking exercise for Post Office bosses.
These so-called consultations are increasingly being revealed as little more than charades - in the case of our post offices it seems to have been a first-class sham.
The Post Office has spent more than a year announcing, on a region-by-region basis, which of the UK’s post offices would be part of the Government’s plans to close 2,500 branches. Yet the public was given just six weeks to come up with alternative proposals.
It is an insult. How can six weeks be enough time for detailed alternative business plans to be put together? How can six weeks be enough time to gauge properly the views of people affected by a potential closure?
Some planning inquiries or inquest can, quite rightly, take many months to complete. Yet decisions to rip the heart out of communities get the green light after six weeks.
The reality is that, just like last year’s proposal to close Worcester’s ambulance control centre, this public consultation was a way of the Post Office showing it had done its civic duty before rubber-stamping a decision it had already made.
We do not believe public protests, petitions and representations have been taken account of properly.
Post Office bosses say there was ‘substantial’ opposition to many of the proposed branch closures in Worcestershire.
They say they ‘considered very carefully’ all the comments made during the public consultation period. How can that possibly be the case given the time frame and that petitions, no matter how many thousands sign them, only ever count as one response?
This sham of a consultation, and others like it, was just not good enough. And the blame lies not with the Post Office but with the Government as it sets the ground rules.
It is time for Whitehall to look again at these processes. Too many major decisions are being made without due regard for the people they affect.
It is far from democratic. And it has to stop.
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