Subject - City Council's post office pledge

Posted : (Friday 21st November 2008 ) By - jess (Registered User)

City Council's post office pledge

The Manchester City Council’s Executive has reaffirmed the council’s policy of investing in neighbourhood shopping centres to help ensure the city’s 58 post office branches remain viable.
A report to the Executive today, Wednesday 22 October, notes that in the last three to four years the City Council has made possible £108 million of public and private investment in district and neighbourhood centres. A further £65 million of public and private funding is committed to regeneration schemes in such centres in the next three years or so.

One example of a regenerated centre where the post office is thriving is North City Centre in Harpurhey which has benefited from £28 million worth of investment in recent
years, and illustrates Manchester’s approach of creating clusters of local shops and services. These include the acclaimed North City Library and North Manchester Sixth Form College.

The report also addressed the request of a previous Executive meeting to explore whether there were viable funding options to keep open five post offices earmarked for closure by Post Offices Limited: Lower Crumpsall (Waterloo Rd), Harpurhey (Rochdale Road), Ladybarn (Mauldeth Road), Parrs Wood (Wilmslow Road) and Barlow Road post offices.
The report noted that the City Council had discussions with Post Offices Ltd about the possibility of entering into a Local Funding contract.

However, based on the financial information provided by Post Offices Ltd, keeping these post offices open would have involved substantial Council subsidy with no chance of them ultimately becoming profit-making.
It goes on to state that in the whole country only one post office out of around 2,000 earmarked for closure has been saved under such an arrangement. None of the Greater Manchester authorities has been able to reach agreement with Post Offices Limited about local funding for post offices.

Deputy Leader of Manchester City Council, Councillor Jim Battle, said: “We have consistently stressed the importance of our local post offices and the best way we can support them is by ensuring the district and neighbourhood centres they are located in are able to flourish.
“Although we made detailed representations to Post Office Limited, they have not been able to present us with a viable way of keeping these five branch offices open and they have left us with no alternative but to concentrate on protecting the remaining network.”