Post offices are at a tipping point — will they decline or thrive?

Gemma Byrne
We are Citizens Advice
4 min readSep 10, 2020
Silhouette of a post office

Post offices are loved and valued by local communities, but their future is uncertain. In the upcoming Comprehensive Spending Review, the government will decide whether to maintain the funding that’s keeping thousands of post offices alive.

There’s a lot at stake in this decision. Post offices are what stop many isolated communities from being cut off entirely — and already we’re seeing offices reduce hours or close their doors. Currently, 1 in 10 post offices in Yorkshire are ‘temporarily’ closed, and the economic shock of the pandemic risks accelerating this trend further.

We’re urging the government to increase the funding it provides to post offices in the spending review. Here’s why:

1. For thousands of communities, post offices are the last face-to-face service

There are around 5,000 post offices that rely on government funding to stay open. This includes around 2,500 branches serving communities that would otherwise have no shops left.

As 1 in 3 bank branches have closed, shops are struggling to stay open and bus services in many rural areas are patchy, it’s post offices that stop people from being cut off.

They’re a lifeline, allowing people to access face-to-face banking services, withdraw benefits, pay bills, post parcels and access a range of central and local government services.

And they’re often the heart of their community. During the pandemic we’ve heard about sub-postmasters delivering post office services to people’s homes, delivering groceries to those having to self-isolate, acting as collection points for medicines, and helping out food banks, schools, the NHS and local businesses.

2. They’re a critical part of the economy

Anyone who saw the queues for post offices during lockdown knows that they’re still vitally important to people in 2020. This isn’t limited to the pandemic. In the UK, people are spending an average £2.5 billion per week online, and 63% use post offices to collect and return their items. The shift to online shopping is only set to continue, meaning post offices will become increasingly important to many people in the future.

3. We think post offices could play an even greater role — like solving the biggest postal problem people in the UK are facing

Right now, homeless people and other people in precarious living situations are trapped in a catch-22 where they can’t get back on their feet because they don’t have an address and they can’t receive letters. This stops people from accessing essential support services and seeking out employment. With adequate funding, post offices could help solve this problemby providing an ‘Address & Collect’ service to the people in their communities who don’t have a secure address.

4. But right now they’re at crunch point — and the cracks in the network are showing

Since 2013 the number of post offices that are ‘temporarily closed’ has more than doubled.

Graph showing increase in temporarily closed post offices in Britain

These closures are often far from temporary2 in 3 stay closed for over a year, and 2 in 5 for over 2 years.

Rural areas, parts of the north of England, Scotland and Wales have been hit the hardest by these closures.

On top of this, many rural areas are now reliant on post office outreach services that give them an average of just 7 hours of access to a post office per week.

For communities impacted by post office closures or unreliable service, there are real, practical and financial consequences:

  • For someone working full time, with only a 7-hour window to access a post office each week, it might mean they can’t pay their energy bill.
  • For a retired person without a car, it could mean spending more money on transport to get to a post office where they can withdraw their pension.
  • And for an individual seller looking to get their business off the ground, it may mean they can’t regularly send parcels to meet the demands of their customers.

The government faces a choice, do they let post offices decline or allow them to thrive?

In the upcoming spending review, the government will decide whether or not to renew the funding it provides post offices.

By strengthening funding, the government can help fix the cracks in the post office network and allow post offices to provide more social value to their communities.

If the government decides not to continue this funding, the future of 5,000 post offices will be at risk.

The government should invest now to let the post office network thrive, not lead it into a managed decline.

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Published in We are Citizens Advice

We are the people’s champion. We are a charity working for the whole of society — whoever you are, whatever your problem

Written by Gemma Byrne

Senior Policy Researcher at Citizens Advice, working on post and telecoms

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