Crown Post Offices: Franchising

Ellie Reeves Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) for securing this timely and much needed debate. Much has already been said about the damage that the downgrading of post offices can do, and I want to provide examples of what has happened in my constituency. Over the past few years, both before and since my election, Lewisham West and Penge has seen three post offices downgraded and franchised out in locations in Forest Hill, Sydenham and Beckenham. Two are Crown branches. The Forest Hill post office now operates out of a WHSmith shop, occupying some of the upper floor. Although it is serviced by a lift, it is cramped, the queue is frequently lengthy, and it is potentially an unfit environment for more vulnerable people. We must remember that vulnerable people are more likely to require the services offered by a fully equipped post office, including the elderly, those who might not have access to the internet and those who have difficulty in understanding, speaking or reading English and require a face-to-face service.

In Beckenham, the Crown branch property has been sold off and the service desks moved out of my constituency and up the high street to a WHSmith store. We have heard numerous examples of why WHSmith stores are not fit for purpose as post offices. Some of the services that used to be run in the Beckenham post office are now located in a convenience store, which has the post office that I now have to use, whereas I used to go to the Crown one. I do not want to do a disservice to the very nice chap that runs the post office there, but it is simply not an appropriate location for a post office. It is a convenience shop and space is limited, and it has only one counter. The queue often trails around the whole shop because demand is high, and the one counter simply cannot keep pace with the people who want to use the services. For a wheelchair user, or someone like me who often has a pushchair with them or a small child in tow, it is neither an efficient nor a convenient experience. The queue snakes between shelves full of alcohol on one side and the freezer on the other. I have lost count of the number of times when I have been there with my three-year-old and have had to tell him no, he can have neither wine nor ice cream while I am trying to send a parcel.

Joking aside, it is a real issue. The Crown post office in Sydenham has just been franchised out. It is and has always been a hub of our community and I remember using that post office when I was a young girl to get my passport and pay into my national savings account. It has saddened us in Sydenham that the franchise has been awarded to a stationery company, ZCO Ltd, with no good track record of running post offices. We are all incredibly worried. The Crown post office in Sydenham provided biometric services, which a number of my constituents had to use. Now they are being told they have to travel five miles to Brixton to get access to the services. It might not sound far to travel on public transport in London, but let us think for a moment: often it is vulnerable people who need those services. Sometimes they do not have recourse to public funds. Affording the bus fares to and from Brixton is not a very practical solution. With each and every downgrade, initial assurances are offered that services will remain unchanged and facilities will be kept on a par, yet whenever branches in Lewisham West and Penge have been downgraded, the assurances given upon franchising have quickly unravelled, leaving my constituents with a sub-par postal service experience.

As a former employment rights lawyer, I have deep concerns about the employment of staff members at franchised-out branches. When I have written to the Post Office seeking assurances, at the outset, they have always been given, but what is the reality? Some protections exist under TUPE but the CWU found that, in 2014-15, only 10 out of 400 staff from Crown post office branches that were closed were TUPE-ed over to the new retailer. In 2016, the figure was six out of 200—3% of staff. Those are shocking figures. Not only is that bad for jobs and workers’ employment; it is bad for customers’ experience. People employed by the Post Office service are highly skilled and trained staff, and they are used to the face-to-face interactions that the job requires. When such high-quality trained permanent staff are lost, services inevitably decline.

We should think about the effect that post office closures and downgrades have in the high street. When we ran the campaign to save the Sydenham Crown post office, local businesses said they desperately wanted to keep it because it would mean footfall on the high street. People who went to the post office would shop in local, usually very small, independent retailers. There is now a lot of worry locally about the effect on the high street of the downgrade. Crown post offices provide stability to high streets. A lot can be said about the transition to online commerce, but one step that the Government can and should take to protect high streets is to stop franchising out our post offices. It is not the only solution, but allowing those vital services to continue on the high street, serving our communities and constituents, is surely in everyone’s interest. The downgrades and closures, and the franchising out, need to stop now.