It's defintiely more 'special' when you send a letter rather than, say, an email.

this this this!
:D

But when I asked for my friend's post codes so I could mail them things, they all thoguht I was a bit weird, seeing as I talk to them online and on the phone or in person quite often...

There's a significant minority who are going to be affected horribly by this.

We need to stop being such an ageist-bastard of a country. Basic human decency should come before profit/loss equations.

so here we go... the full version.

The Government appreciates your concerns. Closing post offices is not popular and everyone would rather it did not have to happen. But as a society we are using them much less than we did and they are losing a significant amount of money.

The post office network as a whole is now losing around £3.5 million a week, up from £2 million a week two years ago, and over that same period the numbers of people using the post office each week is 4 million fewer. The 800 least used branches have fewer than 16 customers a week and in those post offices each transaction costs £17 in subsidy. Some 1600 post offices have fewer than 20 customers a day and in those branches the cost per transaction is about £8. In addition there are 1000 sub post offices that have at least 6 other competing branches within a mile of their business.

The Government fully recognises the important social and economic role of post offices, particularly in rural and deprived urban communities. That is why it is determined to maintain a national post office network allowing people to have reasonable access across the whole country and have put in place a new policy and financial framework to achieve this. It is also why the Government has committed a subsidy of £150 million per year to support Post Office between now and 2011.

There is wide acceptance – including from the National Federation of Subpostmasters – that the current size of the network is unsustainable. New technology, changing lifestyles and a wider choice of accessing services mean that people are not visiting post offices as often as they used to. The Government has been investing substantial sums in the post office network, totalling £2 billion since 1999. That has, for example, paid for a computer link-up for every post office as well as support for non-commercial branches since 2003. The Government has decided to extend that support to 2011 with the provision of up to another £1.7billion additional funding.
This funding will support a new framework for the Post Office. There will be clearly defined minimum access criteria to safeguard coverage in rural, deprived urban and remote areas that will ensure that the vulnerable communities most in need of post office services will be protected. The network will be supplemented by some 500 new and innovative Outreach locations, operated in partnership with other local services such as in pubs, village halls, churches or in mobile post offices, which will mitigate closures, primarily in smaller and more remote communities. Nevertheless, to ensure sustainability, there will need to be up to 2,500 compensated post office closures within the defined access criteria.

Post Office Limited (POL) is responsible for implementing the programme at a local level. They are developing a rolling programme of some 50 local consultations on detailed area plans, based on groups of Parliamentary constituencies. The first area plans went out to local consultation on 2 October 2007 and these plans will continue to be rolled out at regular intervals until July with the whole programme scheduled to take around 15 months to complete.

As well as the numeric access criteria in drawing-up implementation plans, POL will take into account local factors affecting ease of access, such as local geography: rivers, mountains etc. In developing its proposals with the participation of sub-postmasters, local authorities and Postwatch, POL is also required to consider the availability of public transport and alternative access to key post office services, local demographics and the impact on the local economy. Local consultations provide the opportunity to raise any specific concerns over particular proposals. No decisions on individual post offices will be made until local consultation has concluded. The Government does not have a role in proposals or decisions for individual post offices and final decisions on which post offices will close will be taken by POL.

The problem facing the Post Office is that people are simply not using their local post offices in the way that they did in the past. The Government has been accused of driving custom away from post offices by paying benefits and pensions into bank accounts and putting services online but in truth the Government has followed the trends in how people live their lives rather than created them. It continues to look for ways in which we can use the network but it is the duty of a responsible Government to ensure that services are provided in a way that gives the public a choice on how they access them and that represents value for money.

Pensioners can still cash their pensions at a post office but eight out of ten pensioners have their pension paid into a bank account. Among new retirees that figure is nine out of ten. Cost and security of payment are factors here too. Each time a benefit or pension is paid into a bank it costs the taxpayer 1p. Using a Post Office card account costs 80p. Paying by girocheque costs £1.80 a time. To reverse the trend towards payment into bank accounts would run counter to how people increasingly live their lives, it would cost some £200m a year extra in taxpayers’ money and lead to an increased risk of fraud in benefit payments.

People can still renew their car tax at the post office but since the government made available the option for people to do so online the service has grown from half a million users a month last year to a million a month this year. And almost half of those buying their car tax in this way do so outside normal office hours, confirming the demand we know is there for public service to be more available than for the traditional time of nine to five.

The challenge is now for the Post Office to innovate so that more people want to use post offices as an outlet of choice.

The Post Office is working hard to meet this challenge and is now the largest provider of foreign currency in the UK as well as offering car insurance, travel insurance and fixed line phone services. Other products such as broadband have been recently introduced and more are in the pipeline.
The Government introduced the Post Office card account in 2003 and the current contract ends in March 2010. The Government has decided that it will continue with a new account after 2010. The new account will be available nationally and customers will be eligible for the account on the same basis as they are now. EU procurement rules mean that we need to competitively tender for this product. Given the size of the network and the access criteria that we are now introducing, the Post Office is well placed to put in a strong bid.

In addition, cash will be available at the Post Office through some 4,000 free-to-use cashpoint machines now being introduced across the network. A range of interest-paying accounts has been introduced and will be attractive to the general public as well as those Post Office card account users who choose to build up balances on their Card Account.

If you have any specific concerns about the provision of post office services in your area, you should take the matter up direct with POL for clarification. This can be done via the company’s website www.postoffice.co.uk, or by phoning 08457 22 33 44 or by writing to POL Customer Care, FREEPOST NAT 18105, Sunderland SR3 3BR.

Exactly this. Spot on.