WIREDGOV

We welcome the Business & Enterprise Committee's new report 'Post offices - securing their future'. It recognises the need for the Post Office to find new business and suggests a variety of ways in which this might be done. In our contribution to the Committee’s inquiry, we called for the Post Office to expand its range of financial and banking services.

'Post offices - securing their future' also suggests the Post Office could provide a wider range of community services and calls on local authorities to use post offices to supply more of its services. The report notes that in deciding to support the retention of some post offices, Essex County Council took the view that an important part of aim in doing so was to counter isolation in communities.

Visit the Business & Enterprise Committee's website to find out more and download their report

We're pleased that the Committee has endorsed some of our findings and recomendations. Our evidence concentrated on:

• The role of the post office in providing a range of financial services for vulnerable people

• The scope for the post offices in providing banking services

• The case for partnership working between post offices and credit unions

• The importance of the post office to rural businesses, home-workers and self-employed people

• Relationship with the rural retail sector, in particular the last remaining shop in the village

• Emerging good practice by local authorities to retain post offices and rural businesses

• The case for local authorities to use the post office for more of its own services and to promote it as a community hub

• A need to evaluate the present outreach provision  before expanding this means of delivering services