Labour leader calls for Council to be authoritative after post office closures

Councillor Colin Lambert

Rochdale’s Labour Group leader, Councillor Colin Lambert, has expressed “severe disappointment” at the news that seven post offices have been earmarked for closure across the Borough, and has called for a swift response from Rochdale Council.

The potential closures will be announced tomorrow (Tuesday 10 June). A six-week consultation will then start on the future of the branches. 57 branches across Greater Manchester are set to axed.

Councillor Lambert said: “The announcement that seven post offices in our Borough are on the closure hit list is bound to cause a great deal of distress across our community.

“It is vital now that the Council acts in a manner that will best serve our communities and avoids hysterical posturing. We want to know how well prepared they are to fulfil their promise of looking to take over the running of post offices. We have been calling for the council to have a strong contingency plan in place for a while and I very much hope that they will release this immediately.”

Councillor Lambert added that the Labour Group would be campaigning to halt closures except where the postmaster or postmistress had agreed that their business was no longer viable and wanted to close. “If the community feel that a Post Office Service is needed in their locality then we will campaign with the community to provide these services locally,” he said. “If these closures go ahead we will lobby the council to run the services in-house like other councils such as Essex are now planning to do.”

Rochdale’s Labour Parliamentary Candidate, Simon Danczuk, said it was important that all political parties treated this issue seriously and avoided cheap political opportunism. “I have serious concerns about how post office closures will impact on communities,” he said.

“But this is a complex issue and any opportunity for serious discussion of the future of our post office network is usually drowned out by cheap political opportunism. We need to look at what is realistically achievable here and avoid hollow gestures and empty slogans.”

Councillor Lambert said he hoped the closure announcement would bring all political parties together to find a solution to keeping community services open. He continued: “We’ve known that these services have been under threat for some time so I very much hope that our Council has been proactive and is well-prepared to bring in a rescue plan – if needed – to safeguard our post offices.

“It’s important that all political parties co-operate on this and I look forward to talking to other party leaders on how we find the best solution for the community.”

This view was further supported by the Labour MP for Heywood and Middleton, Jim Dobbin, who added that he would be taking soundings from the post offices facing closure and would be happy to present any public petition to Parliament. “I will be encouraging the public as much as possible to use the post offices to make them viable,” he stressed. “What we need to do now is build a broad base of support to find local or national solutions.”