Last weekend, in a flurry of activity, I left comments on Geoffrey Cox’s website.
Yesterday, I received a reply, which is reproduced in full below.
Proposed Post Office Closures
Thank you very much for your letter about the proposed reduction in services at your local Post Office.
I could not agree with you more about the necessity of maintaining a Post Office in Buckland Brewer and indeed all our local villages.
I have pledged to do everything I can to try and halt the closure of sub-post offices in Torridge & West Devon. In 2006 I organised and delivered a petition of many thousands of signatures to Downing Street and presented it in the House of Commons to the Speaker. I was a strong supporter of the National Federation of Sub-Postmasters’ campaign and I have also joined the Conservative Parliamentary Enterprise Group Commission on High Street Shops. Further information can be found on my website at www.geoffreycox.co.uk
I will continue to fight for our Post Offices during this period of consultation and I shall pass on your comments to the Post Office’s consultation team.
In my view, this is the best way in which people can help save their Post Office. It is true that elsewhere in the country, the experience of the Post Office’s consultations has not been good and a few branches only have been saved. Yet, the first justification that the Post Office Limited has used for refusing to contemplate keeping a sub-post office open has been the lack of public response to the consultation.
It is vital that local people should get involved. Many of the decisions to close individual post offices are unexpected, even bizarre. We have to make informed and relevant arguments for the preservation of the threatened branches.
Thank you once again for making me aware of your views.
Yours sincerely
Geoffrey Cox, O.C., M.P.
I’d like to keep this site and the campaign free from party politics. I’m please that Mr Cox responded quickly. However, he didn’t say much more than I thought he would and this looks very much like a form letter.
In reality, Cox has little or no power to change the Post Office’s decision. He’s the wrong party, not that it has helped campaigners in the right constituencies.
Nevertheless, his office can provide guidance on how we take forward the campaign. That is vital.
