Councillors warn of detrimental effect on neighbouring business if branch closes

‘Appalling’ and ‘abysmal’ were just two of the adjectives used by councillors to express their disgust at the service offered by Chiswick’s main post office. The damning descriptions came at this week’s Chiswick Area Committee Monitoring meeting where the proposed closure of the smaller post office at the eastern end of the High Road was being discussed.

However, whilst residents are up in arms over the closure, Cllr Gerald McGregor told the committee that salaried employees who run the post office branch are in fact happy to take the redundancy package offer by their employers. The report submitted to the committee also noted that “any campaign to save the Post Office may be detrimental to the financial welfare of the sub-postmaster”.

“But this is about more than just stamps,” said Cllr McGregor “When the post office closed the branch at Bedford Corner footfall dropped dramatically and all the neighbouring businesses suffered. The post office was a focal point.”

The committee agreed to explore other locations to site post office services using the library and Tesco / Sainsbury locals as preliminary suggestions. However, as noted by Cllr Adrian Lee, the service of the main post office also needs to be addressed. “The main post office franchise needs to be adjusted to cope with the additional customers brought about by the closure of the High Road branch. It should be that all ten counters are open when the queue reaches a certain length.”

If branch closure will impact most on people with mobility issues as the nearest alternative branches are located at 353 King Street, Hammersmith (0.44 miles) and 1 Heathfield Terrace (0.53 miles) and the elderly who have their pensions paid into a post office account and therefore cannot use bank cashpoints to access their money.

In February the Post Office commenced a six-week public consultation (which ends 2nd April) to receive comments on the proposed closures. A copy of the consultation can be found at Post Office's Network Change Plan. To receive a hard copy of the plan email consultation@postoffice.co.uk

March 20, 2008