By Paul Reoch

ELDERLY RESIDENTS of a Perth community are suffering as a result of losing their post office and this is set to worsen over the winter.

That’s the view of Jack Stewart who yesterday told The Courier that pensioners in Bridgend are now having to travel to either Scone or the centre of Perth to use postal services.

Bridgend was one of three Perth post offices to be axed by Post Office Ltd in July. The other outlets were at Cherrybank (Glasgow Road) and Letham (Garth Avenue).

The move was condemned at the time by a host of politicians and Mr Stewart said, “There has been a very bad reaction to this.

“I have spoken to other pensioners at the South Street post office and they have described the closures as disgraceful and unfair.

“The Royal Mail made a profit of £177 million, but they are clearly putting their interests first.”

Mr Stewart, who is also chairman of the Tayside Pensioners’ Convention, added, “It has affected the communities in Bridgend and Cherrybank, who now have to travel because of the closures. And it is going to be even worse during the winter months.

“I don’t know how the bosses of the Post Office can sleep at night. Do they not have a conscience?

“With the profits that they made, surely this money could have been channelled into keeping some post offices open.

“The postal service used to be a great thing, with two deliveries a day. But now I have cancelled my post office account, which is sad.”

The closures followed a six-week public consultation with Post Office Ltd, which included 90 meetings with those concerned about the branches facing closure.

However, Post Office Ltd denied that customers have to travel far to access post office services.

“There is a main branch within the town and other services available in the area,” said a spokesperson.

“The UK Government made it quite clear that the network needed to lose 2500 post office branches across the UK and the closure of Bridgend was one of these branches.

“It closed because it was loss-making for Post Office Ltd and had low customer usage.

“The Post Office has not made a profit of £177 million—this is across Royal Mail Group Ltd as a whole and mainly due to Royal Mail.

“The Post Office has made a very small profit of £4 million—in part due the Social Network payment from the UK Government to keep branches open, and closing branches through the Network Change programme.

“Getting back into profit was something we were tasked to do and this plan is continuing, but the future of the Post Office is by no means secure.

“The decision on the Post Office card account is clearly central to the future of the branch network.”