Leader
Postscript
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| LAST POST: Cheryl Clark has a chat with one of her customers at Simpasture Post Office, Newton Aycliffe, which is closing |
It was announced this week 37 Post Offices across the
region will close between July and September. Owen
Amos visited one of them, in Simpasture, Newton
Aycliffe, to see what will be lost
CHERYL Clark's Post Office name badge
is clipped - the wrong way round - to a
grey teddy bear behind the counter.
Cheryl, you see, doesn't need it. Her
name is known because she's known,
not because a name badge says so. I know, because
I counted. Of her first 25 customers yesterday, every
one called her Cheryl. Every single one. This, like
the adverts want, is the people's Post Office.
Except the people's Post Office is closing these
people's post office. More than 4,000 signed a
petition to keep it open, more than 100 protested
outside. It is popular and profitable. Yet, in
September, it will close. A head office poster glibly
declares: "Post Office Ltd would like to thank all
respondents for their input, which provided us with
detailed local knowledge to factor into our decision
making process for the Cleveland
with South Durham and
Richmond area plan." Yeah, right.
Factor this. "I think the decision
to close this Post Office was taken
before any consultation - I'm sure
of it," says customer Audrey
Clough. Or stakeholder Audrey
Clough, as the Post Office Ltd
doubtless knows her. "We wrote to
the Post Office Ltd and destroyed
their arguments. All of them,
destroyed. I think all our
correspondence went on the shelf,
or in the shredder. The nearest
branch is the town centre, or the
trading estate. It's too far. I am
extremely angry - and it's not just
me. It's the whole of Simpasture."
Mrs Clough pulls out a letter
she sent to the Post Office Ltd, and
their facile, insipid response: "I
would like to assure you all the points that you have
highlighted have been recorded," they wrote. "For
further information visit www.postoffice.co.uk"
Simpasture Post Office, Newton Aycliffe, is on a
shopping parade between a hairdresser's, tanning
salon, butcher's and baker's, chippy and
newsagent's. There's sheltered accommodation
opposite, an overgrown green and a pub, the Iron
Horse, nearby. It's a mile from the town centre.
The post office is at the back of a shop that sells
everything from prunes to puncture repair kits,
Rich Tea to reporter's notebooks. (Very useful,
incidentally, for reporters who arrive ten minutes
late, in a flap, without their notebook. Believe me.)
At 9.10am, I'd missed the first queue of the day. By
9.20am, it was back.
The first customer wants to send a parcel to
Richmond. "First or second class?" Cheryl asks.
"They employ dodos at the weekend, so I'd better
go first." The second is sending clutch bags she's
sold on eBay. Throughout the day, there are people
sending letters, people sending parcels, people
paying gas bills and people - lots of people -
withdrawing money.
"I think it's disgusting," says Mildred Strevens,
75, from the nearby sheltered
accommodation. "All the old
people round here - it's not on
closing it. I'll have to get the bus
or a taxi to the town centre and
wait in their queue. Sometimes
there are just two people working
there. With this closing, it will be
even worse. I'd like to see Gordon
Brown queuing for an hour - that
might just surprise him. They get
their salary and they're not
bothered about anyone else."
Every customer is angry. And
it's not anger whipped up for the
papers, or anger prompted by a
picture-hungry politician. It's
proper anger and - more
pertinently - proper
disillusionment at the sham
consultation.
"I think it's stupid," says Ken Wise, 68. "We have
got to think of people, not just money. The old
people who come here, they can hardly walk. Now
they'll have to go to the town centre. It's stupid."
When there's not a queue, Cheryl chats to
customers about their kids, or their mam, or - more
often - the closure. Some stay ten minutes, putting
the world to rights while putting their purse away.
Forget Westlife, and Joan Collins - they should film
the adverts here. Warmer, funnier and, most
importantly, cheaper.
The community will live without the post office,
but it will be weaker. These people will have one less
conversation, one less gossip. The post office natter
reflects the community and shapes it, too. The
bosses should stand here one morning: watching,
listening, learning. The input might factor their
decision-making process.
Cheryl, 51, and her husband Maurice, 55, bought
the shop two years ago. It will survive without the
Post Office - the accountant told them so - but there
will be a gap, literally and figuratively. "We've asked
the customers what to put here instead of the post
office," says Cheryl. "One of them suggested pole
dancing. That would be interesting."
They were told their branch was threatened in
November; it was made public in February. The
impassioned campaign, led by a steering
committee, couldn't save it. "I have lived round here
for 50 years, me and my husband - if I don't know
the customers, I get to know them," she says. "It's
busy here, but we always take the time to say How
are you doing?' It takes nothing, but I'd rather that
than pressing buttons, saying Here's your money'.
That's not the right attitude."
ONE criterion for closing, I'm told, is lack of
wheelchair access. With that, a man in a
wheelchair enters, no bother at all. He, of
course, knows Cheryl. "Everyone is so upset at the
closure," she says. "It doesn't bear thinking about.
They should have me up in the House of Commons.
I would have gone on the warpath."
"In town, there're only two serving, there's
always a queue, and all you get is Number seven
please', or Number five please'," says Carol Poole,
61. "I'm disabled myself. I live round the corner and
it won't be the same. It just won't be the same."
Intrigued, I pop to the town centre post office
before leaving Newton Aycliffe. The queue is sixstrong
and it's fine. But there's less socialising, less
spirit, and less Cheryl. Compared to Simpasture, it
seems centralised, big and bland. Like much of
modern life, really.
■ According to the
Government, three in four
post offices lose money and
the network loses £4m a day.
But, to Cheryl, Audrey,
Mildred, Ken, Carol, and
many others, Simpasture is
not a business, it's their
people's post office. Or was,
at least.
8:27am Friday 16th May 2008
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CommentPosted by: Malcolm Fraser, Durham City on 6:45pm Sun 18 May 08
The post office management should be required to publish all input to their so-called consultation process and explain precisely on which grounds each submission is ignored and over-ruled. They will not do this voluntarily because the whole process is obviously a sham - and doubtless some of them will be getting a bonus based on the number of post offices closed.
The post office management should be required to publish all input to their so-called consultation process and explain precisely on which grounds each submission is ignored and over-ruled. They will not do this voluntarily because the whole process is obviously a sham - and doubtless some of them will be getting a bonus based on the number of post offices closed.
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