Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what steps he is taking to support rural post offices.

There are over 11,500 post office branches in the UK – over half are in rural areas – which the Government supports through an annual £50m network subsidy to ensure the viability of rural and community branches.

Government further works to ensure Post Office Limited maintains a minimum number of branches and a geographical spread of branches in line with published access criteria. The access criteria ensure that however the network changes, services remain within local reach of all citizens.