Cornwall Rural Community Council has replied to the consultation the Post Office have undertaken in respect of the recent announcement of proposed post office closures in Cornwall querying why Cornwall has taken a bigger hit than other counties (overall, 62 conventional post office closures are proposed which is almost 23% of the network in Cornwall compared to only 12.6% in Dorset, for example).

Mr Paul Parkin, chairman of the Rural Community Council, states in his letter that “The fact that the proposals for Cornwall are riddled with inaccuracies leaves me with no confidence that this process has been thought through with any logic or parity. For example, the report states that Dartmoor and the Isles of Scilly are part of Cornwall, that Cornwall has a population of 700,000 and that Cornwall has only four “larger” towns, all of which are completely false. These inaccuracies give rise to suspicion as to how this overall data has been applied locally and its relationship to local circumstance and decision making”.

The Rural Community Council argues that the post office network has been systematically undermined by government policy by the continued erosion of services that provide post office business and that there has been no concern for those that particularly rely on these services. In Cornwall it is especially the elderly and the rurally isolated who will suffer. Many elderly people or people on low incomes do not have their own personal transport and it is impossible for these to access alternative post office provision in many cases, as public transport in Cornwall is poor and access on foot is difficult and dangerous due to narrow, hilly lanes with no footpath. For those that do have the luxury of running a car, there will be a negative environmental impact caused by additional car journeys.

Mr Parkin warns that, in many cases, villages will not only lose their post office but their local convenience shop as well where these operate together.

He concludes by urging the PO to revisit the list of those scheduled for closure in a more considered and logical approach, taking into account more thoroughly access issues and opportunities to enable sustainable profitability through imaginative solutions.