Younger urban poor hard-hit by Post Office closures

As the countdown begins for closing a further 2,500 local Post Offices during the next 18 months, a new research study from the National Consumer Council (NCC) and Dr Foster research consultancy uncovers the harsh reality of the impact of past closures.

While rural communities were largely protected on social grounds from closures between 2002 and 2006, some of the poorest outer urban communities with heavy reliance on their local Post Office bore the main brunt – with their lifeline to this essential service severed.

NCC is now urging Post Office Ltd to learn the lessons of this research to ensure that communities with the greatest need for Post Office services – whether in urban or rural areas - are targeted for protection on social grounds in future.

Nicola O’Reilly, from the National Consumer Council, said, ‘Protecting vulnerable communities from the impact of Post Office closures is no simple task. People are as important as places in these decisions. It’s vital that plans for the next 2,500 closures protect the people who would be hardest hit.

‘What’s more, the study showed that people who most rely on Post Office services, such as single mums or elderly people, are often less well-equipped to make their case. The Post Office must recognise this and make it easier for them to give their views.’

The study Post Office Closures 2002 to 2006: lessons for 2007 to 2009 shows that the communities hard-hit by recent Post Office closures were in outer urban areas on large housing estates around the outskirts of smaller cities, such as Cardiff, Nottingham and Leeds, where banks and supermarkets are thin on the ground.

The people in these neighbourhoods tend to be younger, on a low income and often unemployed. Many are lone parents and few have access to a car. With high dependency on state benefits and lack of access to a bank account and mainstream credit, they are heavily reliant on their local Post Office branch – and are acutely disadvantaged when it closes.

Communities with large concentrations of elderly people with no access to a car – in both urban and rural areas - were also disadvantaged by recent Post Office closures.

The study assesses the impact of the change in branch provision, measured by number of Post Offices per household, between 2002 and 2006 on different groups within both rural and urban communities. It was carried out for NCC by the Dr Foster research consultancy and used Experian’s Mosaic consumer segmentation system to identify which groups within a community are most likely to have a social need for Post Office services. Professor Richard Webber, University College London, analysed the findings. He is a consultant to Dr Foster and a leading authority on consumer segmentation who directed the development of the Mosaic system.

Commenting on the impact of closures up to 2006, Professor Webber said, ‘At a national level, Post Office Ltd has worked with sub-postmasters’ preferences to decide which Post Offices should be closed. However, in practice, a consistent pattern is not easy to discern. Some neighbourhoods of acute social need do not seem to have benefited from protection and the closure rate is very uneven between similar areas, as well as across different regions of the country.’

Under new minimum access criteria for the next 2,500 Post Office closures announced by the government in May this year, Post Office Ltd has to take account of local demographics in developing local area plans on which the closure decisions will be based. While measures for distance to the nearest Post Office have been set out in the new criteria, measures of social need have not been specified.

NCC is therefore keen that Post Office Ltd uses the range of demographics that we have suggested to identify social need and ensure that pockets of high Post Office dependency are factored into closure plans.

And, given that public consultations will play a key role in each area - where some communities are better equipped than others to press their case - NCC wants to see a sensitive and responsive consultation process.

It is urging Post Office Ltd to allow communities and their representatives time to prepare for local consultation by publicising, as widely as possible, a timetable for consultation at regional and local levels. Post Office Ltd should also recognise the differences in communities’ abilities to communicate their concerns through a public consultation process, proactively seeking local views using a range of consultation techniques to ensure all groups’ views are heard and taken into account.