As you'll know from previous blog entries, I have raised with Dundee City Council the possibility of taking legal action to stop the Dundee Post Office closures. If you click on the headline above, you can read the latest update in today's "Courier."The City Council’s legal officers have been making thorough investigations on the legal position and the likelihood of a viable case being made. The legal position is complex and the Greater London Authority’s recent attempt to stop London Post Office closures was not successful at the High Court.
The Council’s legal officers have concluded that the most likely way of forcing a re-think by Post Office Limited to their closure plans affecting Dundee Post Offices is to ask Postwatch, the Post Office Watchdog, if it would be prepared to request a suspension of the Nethergate Post Office closure pending a review of the consultation exercise and a fuller statement by Post Office Limited on the consultation process and why it appears it dismissed evidence brought forward by both myself and Dundee City Council about the potential for customer growth at this Post Office in the future.
The Council’s legal officers have concluded that the most likely way of forcing a re-think by Post Office Limited to their closure plans affecting Dundee Post Offices is to ask Postwatch, the Post Office Watchdog, if it would be prepared to request a suspension of the Nethergate Post Office closure pending a review of the consultation exercise and a fuller statement by Post Office Limited on the consultation process and why it appears it dismissed evidence brought forward by both myself and Dundee City Council about the potential for customer growth at this Post Office in the future.
I hope that a suspension of one closure pending a review of the consultation exercise can then open the wider issue of all Post Office closures in Dundee and across the wider region. Post Office Limited has not undertaken a transparent and open consultation and decision making process, and has ignored Cabinet Office guidance on the length of consultation exercises (the Cabinet Office says they must be a minimum of 12 weeks and the Post Office process took just six).
Following my letter to the Prime Minister criticising the Labour Westminster Government's failure to protect our Post Offices, the Prime Minister’s Communications Unit has replied - the usual dire, bland, non-reply that is New Labour (or is that now Old New Labour ... err ... or New Old Labour ... whatever - it will lose the next election).
Following my letter to the Prime Minister criticising the Labour Westminster Government's failure to protect our Post Offices, the Prime Minister’s Communications Unit has replied - the usual dire, bland, non-reply that is New Labour (or is that now Old New Labour ... err ... or New Old Labour ... whatever - it will lose the next election).
I think it is dreadfully disappointing that the Prime Minister’s Office completely ignored the points raised by me about the sham of a consultation process and the need of the Labour Westminster Government to think again about its Post Office closure programme. I know from councillor colleagues on other local authorities that the anger and upset in Dundee at the closure of four local Post Offices is mirrored right across the country and it is a sad state of affairs that the Prime Minister and his government seem so out of touch with public concern about Post Office closures.