SME Business News

Post Office owners in some parts of the country have received a shot in the arm from local County Councils. Portsmouth councillors have become the latest local authority to throw a potential lifeline to local Post Offices, faced with the threat of closure.

Gerald Vernon-Jackson, leader of Portsmouth council has backed ideas put forward by Essex CC, to investigate whether it can take over post offices after a national consultation on the future of the service.

The Essex CC leader Lord Hanningfield says that fifty local authorities have expressed interest in combining local council and post office services.

 Lord Hanningfield said: “I am delighted that we have been able to enter into serious negotiations with Post Office Ltd that will enable Essex County Council to step in and keep open a number of post offices that had been previously set for closure. This is a unique and groundbreaking deal.

‘This is exactly what local government should be doing. Identifying local needs and priorities and delivering on them for local communities. The principle of allowing local people and their representatives to run and deliver local services has once again been underlined here. Essex County Council is setting the benchmark in delivering what its residents want and I am pleased to offer what we have done here as a potential model for others.

‘Let me also stress that this is also not about replacing one public subsidy with another. Our intention is very clear; the money that we will be investing on behalf of the people of Essex will be used, over the course of the next three years, to help each branch to move, as far as possible, to become financial self-sufficient and cost neutral to the council.’