April Adjournment

Part of Points of Order – in the House of Commons at 2:52 pm on 3 April 2008.

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Photo of Simon Burns Simon Burns Opposition Whip (Commons) 2:52, 3 April 2008

I shall not seek to detain the House for long, but I want to raise two important issues that my constituents feel should be brought to the House's attention before we go into recess. We have already heard during today's debate about sub-post offices, but the first issue that I want to raise concerns Chelmsford Crown post office.

Until last summer, Chelmsford Crown post office was an extremely fine institution on the ground floor of a stand-alone building close to disabled car parking and accessible to shoppers in the centre of Chelmsford. Solely as a penny-pinching, cost-saving exercise, the Post Office decided to close down that post office and to move it to the first floor of WH Smith in Chelmsford High street. That is not a problem inasmuch as the location is still in the centre of the town with easy access from the outside of the building, but the problems begin on the inside, because as always with such deals the services are on the first floor. No retailer will give up its prime ground floor site where people enter the shop from the street to buy its products. The important issue is whether there is good and proper access to the first floor for members of the public—particularly those in wheelchairs, the frail and those with disabilities. As far as the Chelmsford Crown post office in WH Smith is concerned, the short answer is that there is not.

Before this happened, I warned the Post Office that there would be problems, but my warnings were brushed aside. Unfortunately, the Crown post office has been in WH Smith for six or seven months and, sadly, my fears have been fully realised. There is a staircase to the first floor and one escalator; there is not an up escalator and a down escalator, so that is a problem. However, the Post Office says that that is not a problem because there is a lift. Indeed there is: it is small, so if people in wheelchairs want to use it, queues form. Inevitably, the lift breaks down. It did recently, and that caused tremendous problems. In the past seven months, people—certainly on one occasion—have had to be carried down by paramedics to get from the first floor out of the building. It is unforgivable that such a service is being provided in exchange for the first-class service that we received when we had our own stand-alone post office.

There is another problem. People can get in through the WH Smith high street entrance from the same level, although if they are going to the Post Office they then have to use the escalator, go up the stairs or, if they can, get into the lift. However, the only way to come in through the other entrance—in the London road, where all the buses stop—is down four very steep steps. There is no access for wheelchairs, so wheelchair users have to go all the way round to the other entrance. For those with non-motorised wheelchairs, that is a long distance. That is unacceptable.

My constituent Mrs. Gower was so incensed by the issue that in a relatively short period she started a petition that got more than 600 aggrieved—and mostly, but not exclusively, elderly—people to complain and try to pressure the Post Office into doing something about the situation. The best solution would be to go back to the status quo of a year ago. I fear, however, that that is not a viable option; the Post Office has made the move and is saving money. It does not seem that concerned about the quality of the service that it provides its customers, because people have to buy stamps and take their parcels, so they are, up to a point, a captive audience. That is particularly true because in previous waves in the past five years—although not this wave—the company closed many of the sub-post offices in the surrounding area, saying that the Crown post office could become people's sub-post office. Despite the lip service that it pays to the interests of its customers, the Post Office is not desperately concerned; otherwise it would not have moved the Crown post office to that unsuitable site and it would certainly have done something about access to it.

Something has to be done; the situation cannot carry on in this way. I have presented the petition to the head of the Post Office and I have been told that the regional manager of WH Smith will visit shortly to have a look at the situation. That is good of him; I am grateful, and I hope that he does visit. However, I also hope that he realises the problems and comes up with concrete ideas to overcome them. One such idea would be to put a proper access way at the London road entrance so that wheelchair users, the frail and those with mobility problems would be able to use the entrance. Many of them use buses to come into town and the buses stop immediately outside the entrance.

The second issue is that when people finally get upstairs, there are queues before they can get served. It would be sensible if there was a counter on the ground floor for the elderly and those with disabilities or mobility problems. That would save them having to go upstairs in the first place. I suspect that that is pie in the sky, because WH Smith does not want to restrict on its ability to make profits. However, if it is going to use its premises as a short-changed way of providing a Crown post office, perhaps it could sacrifice a little bit of space to help its customers.

I hope that the Deputy Leader of the House will not only pass on my comments to the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform but ask him or one of his junior Ministers to have a word with the Post Office to see whether something positive can be done in the near future to alleviate the problem.