Keith Potter (Letters, 6 October) is right. Cornwall is beautiful but like many rural locations it is no place to wear rose-tinted glasses. I visited post offices in rural south-east Cornwall just four weeks ago. I understand how much people there rely on our services and I saw how committed post office colleagues are – to meet the needs of those customers.
My letter of 26 September still stands: post offices provide great service in communities across the UK. If Mr Potter gets in touch, we will look into the issues he raises. We can usually improve things locally when we work with people who share our passion for the Post Office.
Paula Vennells
Group CEO, Post Office Ltd
• Keith Potter’s view of the way post offices are managed is correct. Most of the postmasters I meet and work for say the same . In many cases they state that the payments from Post Office Ltd do not cover the work they perform for the company; on a good day it could reach about £3 per hour, and because they are self-employed the minimum wage is not a consideration.
At interview for new postmasters they tell me that a rosy picture is painted by the interviewers which does not live up to the reality of the job, and the many hours of work that have to be put in to try and make post office work viable.
Add to this the deliberately managed decline of the network, no innovative schemes such as access to the internet for the elderly and other people without these skills (especially in rural areas), lack of interest by the government which could give them a kick up the backside , and the future – or lack of it – looks bleak.
Relief postmaster
(Name and address supplied)
• I run two post offices in Swansea, one as a main branch and another as a local branch. Both are located inside convenience stores. I totally agree with the points raised by Keith Potter.
My main office closes at 6.30pm every weekday of the week and 5.30pm over the weekends. We would love to open till 8pm or 9pm as the shop is open late – but it is not safe to keep it open after 6.30pm with only one person and post office remuneration is not enough to employ additional staff even at minimum wage. Worse, the Post Office Horizon computer system sends wrong information to its central servers, which means we often do not receive enough cash. We pay out lot of money in pensions and benefits every week, and when the cash runs out, customers suffer – especially the elderly. Every single week, I spend 15-20 minutes twice a week on call-waiting with the Post Office cash centre trying to get more cash for the branch.
My second office is a local branch, which closes at 5.30pm on weekdays and 1pm on Saturdays and is not open on Sundays. My father-in-law works at the shop in the evenings and weekends and I cannot afford pay another member of staff just to work at the post office. Post office remuneration works out to be less than the minimum wage for the hours we put in weekly.
I’ve been with Post Office Ltd for more than six years and during that time everything seems to have gone downhill. I seen many staff who work directly for POL lose their jobs. In the local cash delivery office, they cut down from 29 employees to just 10. A friend who used to run five post offices has sold three and is looking to sell the others. If POL doesn’t improve the remuneration for sub-postmasters, I can only see more closures and limited services.
T Karan
Birchgrove, Swansea
• I am proud to be the sub-postmaster of Ashburton post office in Devon. Thousands of sub-postmasters across the UK are working extremely hard to give customers great service, sustain the branches, provide employment and play a significant part in supporting our high streets, towns, villages and communities.
Excellent customer service is key – and thousands of colleagues make a difference to so many people every minute of the trading day. In some cases, a conversation with a branch colleague maybe the only interaction a vulnerable customer has that day.
Please give post offices a chance. Promoting the great service and thousands of unsung heroes who make a positive difference every day does make a difference to sustaining our communities.
Stuart Rogers
Ashburton, Devon
• My wife and I operate a tiny rural post office branch in Yalding in Kent. Our branch, although tiny, is bright and welcoming. But I do have some sympathy with the person who describes some branches as rather grotty. Post Office Ltd has made it almost impossible for people to operate little post offices by forever cutting remuneration rates – and government subsidy removal for most branches is making it harder to stay in business. To make a living operating a post office the branch has to be within a much larger premises such as a supermarket, convenience shop, garage shop, WH Smith, etc. What generally happens is that the post office bit of the business is a minor player on the income side and is shunted off to a distant corner.
We have many customers forever complaining of indifferent service in run-down larger shops and, whatever POL says about longer opening hours, customers prefer friendly small branches. In our area we have had several branches close down with nearby convenience stores being offered the chance to bring the branch into their shops. The convenience stores locally have refused the offer as it increases their wage costs disproportionately to the extra business it might create.
Tim Chapman
Yalding, Kent
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