Post Office Services: Burncross

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Monday 30th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Angela Smith]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. That is very kind. I know that we have plenty of time for this debate, but I will not detain the House for longer than is necessary.

Tonight I raise an issue that is unlikely to attract a great deal of parliamentary attention. However, for many people in Burncross in my constituency, the loss of their post office is a major issue that threatens serious disruption to their everyday lives. Indeed, it is such an issue that within days of the announcement that their well-used post office was to close, I received a petition from more than 1,400 local residents asking me to help.

Burncross is situated between the small town of Chapeltown and the old pit village of High Green. It is a residential area characterised predominantly by semi-detached homes of mainly private tenure, along with a smattering of local authority homes and some sheltered housing. The area is mixed demographically, but one of its principal characteristics is a higher than average proportion of residents who are eligible for an old age state pension. In other words, those who are most likely to need accessible postal services, and least likely easily to traverse large distances over Sheffield’s renowned hills to access them, are most likely to be hit by the closure. That is especially true in view of the comparatively poor public transport connectivity in the area.

The area, nestling as it does between High Green and Chapeltown, suffers from a lack of retail establishments of its own. For years, however, Burncross has enjoyed the presence of a Costcutter, which has also housed the post office. The supermarket has become an important part of the fabric of the area. It has been there for all the years that I have been the Member of Parliament for Burncross, and it was there for many years before that.

The post office has been well used, with some 1,200 transactions a week. It operated at a profit, and in 2014 it was upgraded in the network transformation programme into a new “main style” branch. I believe that that reflects its importance to the post office network. In July this year, however, it was announced without warning that the post office would close imminently, and not because the Post Office considered it to be a failing outlet, as is often the case. This debate does not represent a criticism of the Post Office, or, one may be surprised to find, the Government.

The reason for the closure was that the freehold owner of the building that housed both the supermarket and the post office decided to redevelop the site and construct a new, larger premises. That, one would imagine, could only be a good thing. Costcutter, however, decided at that point not to renew its lease arrangements and has opted out of running its business from the new premises. The upshot is that the Co-op has entered into an agreement with the owners of the building to run one of its supermarkets from the location, but its plans for the store do not include a post office.

Like any good constituency MP, I have spoken to both the Co-op and Post Office Counters about the loss of the service. While Post Office Counters is sympathetic and supports the ongoing provision of postal services in the area—it totally understands the distance that local people will have to travel if they can no longer enjoy the service—its view is that there is nowhere large enough or suitable in the area, apart from the premises soon to be taken over by the Co-op. I am afraid that my conversations with the Co-op—I say this as a member of the Co-op movement—have been very disappointing.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on her campaign to try to retain the post office. I have been involved in many such cases across the water in my own constituency, and we have tried very hard to find alternative premises for post offices. On occasion, the Post Office can give grants to the potential shop owner to increase the size of a property and make it more acceptable. Has she been able to follow that up as a possible solution to her campaign?

[Angela Smith]

I do not think that that is an option, given that the new premises are already larger than the old one in which the post office was housed. That is not really the issue, as I shall establish in a moment.

As I have said, my conversations with the Co-op have been very disappointing. The company allows many postal concessions in its stores throughout the country, and it has such an arrangement in a store in the town of Stocksbridge in my constituency, but it has flatly ruled out giving a concession to run a post office in the new store, which opens next month.

At this point, we need to remember that the post office in the old store was profitable and would no doubt continue to be so, with 1,200 transactions a week. I suspect the reason for the Co-op’s decision is related to a calculation that profit margins for grocery items outweigh those that can be gained from postal services. While I appreciate that the Co-op is a business that has to make a profit in order to be sustainable, it is important to bear in mind the unique selling point of the brand in communities up and down the country. This USP is, of course, its collective roots and its unique position in our social history as a retail business firmly established in the ethics of serving the interests of its customers, who are of course its shareholders, too.

Indeed, given the depth of feeling made so palpable by many of my constituents about the threat to their postal service, I think the Co-op may well succeed in scoring an own goal. Many Burncross residents are saying that they will never forgive the Co-op for, as they see it, taking away their post office. I warn the Co-op now that when Sheffielders decide they are going to dig their heels in, they really dig their heels in. My constituents feel neglected by movements beyond their control: an owner of a property who sees an opportunity to increase profits by redeveloping the premises; a leaseholder in the form of Costcutter not wanting to pay the extra rent that will no doubt be due because of the redevelopment, which is fair enough; and a new leaseholder who intends to use the extra space for what it sees as more profitable purposes, no doubt in part to service the extra rental charges due on the redeveloped store.

The real tragedy of all this, however, is that the customers of Costcutter and the old post office were satisfied with the store that was there. It provided all the services the local community wanted. Now they have lost perhaps some of their most cherished services—the collection of their hard-earned pensions being one of them—in the pursuit of higher profit margins.

To bring my remarks to a close, I appreciate entirely that the Minister will probably say that these are commercial decisions and there is therefore very little she can do, but I am not sure we should just settle for that. My constituents stand to lose permanently what they know to be a vital service—not for the normal reasons of the service not being sustainable, but because a business does not want to allocate space for it since it sees a better opportunity for the use of that space. In such circumstances, surely there should be a role for Government, national or local, to intervene. Ideally, the Government need to be able to act as brokers, incentivising partnerships between organisations to secure the amenities that communities such as Burncross so desperately need. In this instance, of course, it would be something as simple as a post office counter in a grocery store—the very provision that we have often decided is the most sustainable way to make sure that postal services continue to be delivered in a given area.

Can I ask the Minister, therefore, if she will review how concessions, such as those found in supermarkets, are awarded? Can she examine what help Government can give to make sure postal services are provided in circumstances such as those in Burncross? Given that postal services often and increasingly have to compete for space alongside other uses, how can public authorities, working with the Post Office, make sure the public good element of postal services is taken into account when commercial retail decisions are made? My constituents are losing their postal services and cannot possibly be expected to access alternative post office outlets easily, given the distance involved and the particularly hilly nature of the area—and that is particularly the case for the elderly population. Surely Parliament and the Government should be about giving a voice and a say in society to such people, giving the voiceless a voice. I hope the Minister takes note of that in her responses.

Although the circumstances of Burncross losing its post office are local and not that important to the rest of the world, similar stories are being played out across the country, with profit being put before the public good. It is only when those are added together that they start to look like something more important, and then often it is too late for us politicians to do something. Today it might be a community post office in Burncross that loses out; tomorrow it will be another one in another constituency, until eventually the network starts to look like a pale shadow of its former self. Then it will be too late. I look forward to the Minister’s response.