Closure of High Street Services: Rural Areas

Torcuil Crichton Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2025 Westminster Hall

[Torcuil Crichton (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Furniss. I commend the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) for securing this important debate. He and I know the importance of retaining a physical high street in our own highlands and island communities—the most rural in the country. It is their very rurality—the distance between towns, islands and villages—that makes it so important that we retain high street services in the towns we have.

It is not all decline, of course. In the main town in my constituency, Stornoway, the construction of a £50 million cruise ship terminal by the Stornoway port authority has given a new dynamic to the town. There are now more coffee shops than there are butchers in Stornoway. Although I cherish the memories that the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross told us about of buying broken biscuits from his local shop, he must recognise that although times have changed, in the heart of our towns and villages there are older institutions: the butcher—there is a choice of three in Stornoway, and I will not say which one people should buy their Stornoway black pudding from, because they are all good—the crofters store, Tommy Nicolson’s the newsagents, and, as there should be at the heart of every town, the post office.

It is the plight of the post office network, and plans by the Post Office to change or downgrade the Crown offices or the directly managed branches, that I wish to highlight today. I am extremely concerned about the potential closure of the main post office in Stornoway. That move comes as part of a wider announcement that 115 post office branches, which remain Crown offices or directly managed branches, are being considered for closure or moved to a franchise model. Our main branch in Stornoway is extremely valued by islanders—it is a beautiful building that is over 100 years old and in the heart of the town centre.

[John Whitby (Derbyshire Dales) (Lab)]

On the point about longevity and heritage, Wirksworth Heritage Centre—a key community space and cultural asset in Derbyshire Dales—has recently had to close because of economic pressures. Does my hon. Friend recognise the specific challenges facing cultural and heritage sites on rural high streets?

[Torcuil Crichton]

I do. I mentioned that the building in which in the main post office—the Crown office—in Stornoway is housed in is beautiful and over a century old. Although I understand that the Stornoway post office may itself be retained, it may be converted into a franchise and moved elsewhere. That would have a detrimental effect on the town centre. The post office is right smack in the middle of town and easily accessible. It is, ironically, next to a closed TSB bank branch—the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross highlighted the problems of banks closing across the United Kingdom.

[Ben Maguire (North Cornwall) (LD)]

I am delighted that Bodmin in my constituency recently got a banking hub, but other towns like Wadebridge that are an 8 mile, £20 taxi ride away do not have one. Does the hon. Member agree that we could think about mobile banking hubs that would go out to rural areas such as those in his constituency and mine?

[Torcuil Crichton]

We are lucky that we have retained a mobile banking service in the highlands and islands, with the bank van a familiar sight in villages throughout the islands and parts of the highlands, but a central post office in any town in a rural constituency is vital for businesses to deposit their cash as well as for cruise ship tourists and islanders and town dwellers to exchange their currency. I am concerned that the downgrading of Stornoway’s directly managed branch to a franchise counter would leave many of my constituents disadvantaged.

The Crown post office provides services such as currency exchange, banking services and passport services that many franchised post offices do not. To go to another Crown office or to find bureaus elsewhere would involve an hour-long bus journey, which would be preceded by a three-hour ferry journey, because the nearest branch would be on the mainland somewhere near the constituency of the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross. The limited services offered by a franchised post office would not be adequate for my town or any other, because, as I understand it, there is no requirement for them to accommodate the full spectrum of post office services that directly managed branches currently offer.

Concerned MPs have met Post Office executives and highlighted their concerns to the Minister. I hope that the Post Office and the Government take into account rurality and the unique circumstances of island constituencies when considering the future of post offices and the rural high street.

[Several hon. Members rose—]