This blog is my attempt to connect directly with the people of Essex. I hope that it will become a forum for discussion and debate around many of the issues and challenges facing our county. In a sense this is as much your blog as it is mine - so make the most of it and send me your thoughts and comments. In return, I hope to be able to get across a little of what I and the rest of my colleagues in County Hall do; how we are trying to make Essex a better place to live and work, how we are trying to improve the services we offer to you and how we are attempting to promote Essex, locally, nationally and internationally.
Thursday February 21, 2008
Post Offices Latest
Last week I announced that ECC had become the first council in Britain to enter into serious negotiations with Post Office Ltd and the government about the possibility of keeping open a number of post offices that had been earmarked for closure as part of the current nationwide closure programme. We, of course, have a lot of work still to do and therefore it is still too early to be able to name specific branches. It is important also to stress that we will be unable to keep every branch open simply because quite a few of the post masters – who also own or run the co-located shop – in a number of branches have expressed their intention to retire at this time. We of course, rightly, must look at the viability and user criteria of each specific branch. However, we do hope to be in position to announce the results of our discussions in the next few weeks.
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Posted by Lord Hanningfield
(21 Feb 2008)
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