Tonight's Post Office meeting

I had the opportunity of addressing tonight's meeting on the proposed closures by The Post Office of their branches in Lower Richmond Road and Putney Bridge Road.

About 100 residents attended tonight's meeting as did representatives of The Post Office and PostWatch, which I applaud them for given the hiding-to-nothing they, unsurprisingly, got.

I made the point that sticking a poster up in the branches under threat and making available some notices within them is not close to being satisfactory consultation. Nor is the shortness of the consultation period - inexcusable given that they reached the decision about which closure proposals to proceed with back in December. And their response: that the consultation period is fixed and unmoveable, is - I understand - simply wrong.

The Council representative present was asked about the innovative approach taken by Essex County Council in taking over local branches threatened with closure. The council replied that the branches Essex are taking over have already been through the consultation process and have now been confirmed for closure, so they're further down the road. They undertook to give serious consideration to similar measures if our local branches are confirmed for closure after we've made our case for a reprieve. I welcome that.

To date over 700 of you have signed my online petition or returned the postcards I circulated locally: thank you so much for the cross-party support I've received over this. The next stage in my campaign will be to make my formal submission against closure backed up by the response cards and online petitions you've sent me.

More on this soon.