Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether Post Office Ltd includes a count of temporarily closed post offices in meeting the Government's criteria for ensuring fair and reasonable access to post offices.

The Post Office takes into account temporarily closed branches before reporting on its performance against the access criteria. The Post Office’s 2015/16 Annual Network Report was laid in Parliament on Monday 20 February and can be accessed from the Post Office’s website - http://corporate.postoffice.co.uk/sites/default/files/networkreport2016.pdf.