Glenrothes and Central Fife MP Peter Grant is calling on the Post Office to do more to build trust and encourage people to become sub Post Masters & Mistresses once again. The MP’s call come after the Post Office confirmed that the branch in Pitteuchar, Glenrothes, is to close. This is the fourth Post Office closure in Mr Grant’s constituency in just over six months and Mr Grant says that this is a direct result of the way that the Post Office is now managing its network. The Glenrothes and Central Fife MP has previously written to the Post Office to express his concerns, but in the meantime says that more and more constituents are now left without a local service and are expected to travel some miles to their closest branch.
Mr Grant said there is anecdotal evidence that many shopkeepers don’t it is worthwhile to provide a Post Office service because the financial rewards don’t justify the work and expense they would have to incur. He said the Post Office’s failure to properly address the “Horizon” accounting scandal, which saw Post Masters & Mistresses facing bankruptcy, prison sentences and public humiliation after a computer fault led to them being wrongly accused of embezzlement, has also deterred people from running a post office in the future.
Mr Grant said
“Post Offices offer an essential service in our communities but because of mismanagement at top levels within the organisation thousands of my constituents are losing that service. In the last six months alone we’ve seen announcements that Methil, Pitteuchar and now Cadham are to close, and the so-called temporary closure of Markinch has been made permanent. It’s not long either since Leslie Post Office closed without warning.
“When the Post Office announced their plan to close stand-alone Post Offices even in our biggest towns, they promised that it would make the service more sustainable in the long term. That promise is now being shown to be worthless. They’re failing to make it an attractive proposition for a local shopkeeper to run a Post Office from their shop. Local shopkeepers want to provide this vital service to their customers, but they also have businesses to run, bills to pay and wages to pay to the local people they employ. Too often I’m hearing that they can’t go on forever getting very little back for the time and money they put into running a Post Office. Senior Management at the Post Office need to admit that they’ve got their business model all wrong and it needs to be radically changed before there are no more Post Offices left for them to close.”