This week, the Labour Government announced its latest target for cuts. Now, it seems, Post Offices are due to come under Gordon Brown's service cuts knife. With 2,500 due to be closed across the country, Wyre Forest is unlikely to escape the cull.
In 1999, Wyre Forest benefited from 30 post offices. Last year, we had seen one third of them closed, leaving just 20. Should the Government's plans be evenly applied across every district, Wyre Forest will see a further three post offices cut.
Mark Garnier, Conservative Parliamentary Spokesman for Wyre Forest, expressed concerns over the latest round of service cuts: "Wyre Forest's post offices mean a great deal to me personally. The very first campaign I got involved with when I was selected to be the local Conservative Parliamentary spokesman three years ago was one to save the post office on the Stourport Road in Kidderminster. We saved that, but since then I have seen more and more post offices closed.
"This is part of an orchestrated campaign by the Government who have been taking away services that the post office can offer for some time. Pensions, TV licenses, road tax - all are services that have been removed. But what the government does not take into account is the fact that the post office forms, in many cases, the key stone of a community. Local shops survive because of the footfall created by post offices and these cuts could mean the end for small local shops. This urban based government simply does not understand how rural and market town communities work."
Conservatives have called for Sub-Post offices to be given greater freedoms to offer a wider variety of services and to become 'one-stop-shops' for central government services.