Tories make DWP Complicit in Closing more North East Post Offices

 

Save our Post Offices:

Social media is alive with messages from local Councillors regarding the letter sent out from the Department of Work and Pensions to thousands of people on benefits and pensions that the Government intends to close all access to Post Office Card Accounts in November 2021.

Fears that this enforced change from a Conservative Government hell bent on central control of your data will be the final nail in the coffin for many sub post offices. 

Hundreds of thousands of people still get their pensions and benefits paid into POca accounts and manage from week to week on the cash they draw down locally. A change away from that system will place untold pressure on some people whose financial position is only managed through easy local access to funds to pay their way and would struggle to manage or even afford the bus fares in the case of younger people on benefits to travel into their local large Town Centre, the only places where some banks have survived. 

The Conservative Government's policy to run down the number of ATM machines is also heavily quoted as to why this Government needs to think again.

Post offices have suffered badly over the last decade of Tory rule. Councillor complaints on social media are currently most prevalent in rural parts of Durham, Cumbria, Gateshead and the massive almost completely rural County of Northumberland as well as the Tees Valley, but we have begun to notice a livening up of Councillors whose voters live on large densely populated housing estates in the Tyneside and Tees Valley conurbations as their post office branches begin to smell the damage this change will do to their businesses and that if service customers are steered to banks, estate based sub post offices and the shops which support them will not survive the change.

Across the whole of the North-East region post offices are an institution where under normal circumstances people like to meet their friends and neighbours and the weekly visit has become for many a real social event.

In Northumberland many community based social media sites are reporting that its three Tory MP’s are not interested in taking up the fight to stop this massive change and are steering their constituents towards making complaints to their local councillors.

We need to ask and receive answers to the question of why does this Government want to close your local post office? and why is it supporting banks over local post offices and you the people who rely on those post offices? as in most cases banks have deserted the people whilst sub post offices have remained loyal!