In Parliament

Save Springburn Post Office

A strategy agreed by the UK Labour Government means the Crown Post Office in Springburn is now under direct threat of closure. With no banks locally, and the post office an anchor tenant within Springburn shopping centre, its closure would be wholly unacceptable, undermine financial inclusion and hamper regeneration efforts.

They must engage with the local community and trade unions to ensure the Post Office has a strong and vibrant future in Springburn.

I was pleased to be able to speak about this in Parliament.

I commend Kenny Gibson for bringing to the chamber this debate on the leaked plans to review and reduce Crown post offices in Scotland and across the UK. It gives me the opportunity to highlight that the Crown post office in Springburn shopping centre, in my constituency, is one of the branches that could be facing the axe. I find that deeply worrying for several reasons.

I will set out the most fundamental reason. My constituency of Glasgow Maryhill and Springburn now has no high street bank and has not had one for some time. Each time a bank closes—three have closed in Springburn in recent years—the banks indicate that they will work hard to innovate and provide alternative banking opportunities for those who are most vulnerable or who are at risk of financial exclusion. Each time, however, the banks pack up and head out of town, and the promises melt away incredibly quickly.

In that context, I know that the prospect of the Crown post office in Springburn closing fills many of my constituents with great dread, concern and alarm. The people of Springburn do not expect the UK Government’s Post Office to treat them as shoddily as the UK banks have done. That post office is one of the very few vital anchor services that bring local residents into the town centre to access core financial services and a wide range of other services. It also brings them to the town centre to spend their disposable incomes—which are often under strain—in the area.

The closure of the Crown post office would be not only a major blow for those who rely on its services but a body blow to the town centre and the shopping centre that sits in it. It would also be a body blow to the local economy and local businesses, and to many of our elderly and our vulnerable.

As a local MSP and a trustee of the local charity Spirit of Springburn, I want the services and amenities in Springburn to be enhanced, not further diminished. Having looked at the criteria under which potential decisions on Crown post offices may be made, I can see absolutely nothing that acknowledges the vital role that the post office plays in the precarious town centre environment and the local economy. The criteria are completely silent on the matter and do not take it into account at all.

I have written to and met Post Office representatives, and I thank them for their engagement. It is clear that the current plans are a direct consequence of the five-year strategy that the Post Office has set out. The strategy process commenced under the previous Conservative Government but was actually signed off, actioned and approved under the current UK Labour Government. I understand that the cost savings to be delivered by potentially closing post offices are proposed, in part, to help to source funds to better reward postmasters. I appreciate that there may very well be a need for that, but it should not be done on the backs of the communities and towns that rely on their Crown post offices to access core financial and other services, nor on the backs of the vulnerable in my constituency. Those who live in such communities are less likely to have a bank account in the first place, let alone access to online banking or the ability to apply online for a variety of services that are only otherwise available at a Crown post office.

Mr Gibson has written to Gareth Thomas MP, the UK Government parliamentary under-secretary of state for the matter, and I intend to do the same. I hope that we can do so on a cross-party basis—I include Labour MSPs in that—to call on the UK Government to halt the process and ask it to think again.

I asked the Post Office about the number of customers who use the post office in Springburn and about the amount of transactions and the type of services that are used. The Post Office genuinely tried to be as helpful as possible in responding to me, but it was unable to give me official data for public consumption because of commercial confidentiality. I, and my constituents, need that data to plan a way ahead to retain the post office.

We know that the post office is very busy; I suspect that it serves many hundreds of customers every single week and processes many more vital transactions. The banks have closed right across Maryhill and Springburn. This time, the UK Government can do something to stop core financial services in my constituency being terminated and dragged out of Springburn. It must act now, and I commend Kenny Gibson for bringing the debate to the chamber.