Sunday 23 March 2008

"Commons vote on Post Office closures"

I can now put some numbers on my proposal that local voters should decide whether or not their local Post Office should be subsidised, and if they decide to do so, the subsidy should be collected via their Council Tax. The closure of 2,500 Post Offices will cut losses of £4 million per week, if I understand this correctly.

So that's £200 million subsidy per annum divided 25 million households/Council Tax payers = an average increase in your Council Tax bill of £8 per annum to keep your local Post Office open, which may or may not seem like good value.

2 comments:

The Sage of Muswell Hill said...

Why a subsidy from anyone? Why not let the sub-post offices charge an extra 50p per transaction (or whatever they want) to each user of the PO while Royal Mail contributes less - in cash terms - to those "unprofitable" outlets which currently it wishes to close. This is a market solution to this problem and, as in any market, will test if the sub-POs are really wanted.

Mark Wadsworth said...

That's a good idea, actually.