Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what steps he is taking to ensure that people in (a) South Holland and the Deepings constituency and (b) Lincolnshire are able to access essential postal services.

The Government provides an annual £50m Network Subsidy to support the delivery of a minimum number of Post Office branches and a geographical spread of these branches in line with published access criteria. This requires 99% of the UK population to be within three miles of their nearest Post Office outlet. The Government-set Access Criteria ensures that however the network changes, services remain within local reach of all citizens.