Please reconsider the proposed closure of Kendal Post Office and its relocation as a W H Smith franchise. The services that the current Post Office provides will be severely compromised if they are transferred into one of the worst shop facilities in Kendal. The W H Smith store in Kendal does not have the capacity to accomodate the queues that often form in our main Post Office. Nor is it likely to be able to fulfil all the services that a Crown Post Office normally provides and neither will W H Smith match the working conditions and terms of contract and pay that the current Post Office employees enjoy.
Why is this important?
The current plan to close Kendal Post Office and relocate it into the W H Smith store at 46-48 Stricklandgate has generated a great deal of controversy in and around Kendal. Especially the concept of customers having to squeeze into the narrow, cramped and quite inadequate space that W H Smith Kendal currently occupy. SIGN NOW TO SAVE OUR POST OFFICE
Kendal's Post Office is the main Post Office for a very busy market town and is frequently packed with queueing customers even with 3 or 4 counter staff in attendance. Ironically the proposed relocation is to an inferior premises, where the new operators are currently feeling the internet pinch. As with other high Street retailers, W H Smith's year on year profits have been falling. It's High Street sector profits has dropped by 3% and six stores have just been earmarked for closure. Which? (magazine) has again named W H Smith as the most hated store on the high street. In fact it has finished in the bottom two for the last eight years. Having stores like the one in Kendal will not have done much to elevate this lowly position.Closure of our Crown Post Offices and relocation to W H Smith also means the loss of prime high street stores and this contributes further to the demise of our town centres. SIGN NOW TO SAVE OUR POST OFFICE
This petition has been created with support from the CWU (Communication Workers Union). We believe that this "privatisation by the back door" is not good for tax payers who will be funding the Post Office closures. There are currently 74 of these planned and this political ideology risks the jobs of up to 800 post office employees. The public has never endorsed these closures despite the fact that millions of pounds of public money has already been used in the process. £13 million of public money was used in 2014/15 alone to get rid of post office staff, and the CWU estimates the staff compensation cost for this latest privatisation will be at least £30 million. Franchising means the loss of jobs with good terms and conditions as WH Smith replaces experienced Post Office staff with new employees in typically mimimum wage part time roles. SIGN NOW TO SAVE OUR POST OFFICE
The good people of Kendal and South Lakeland deserve to have a properly funded state owned Post Office service as indeed does every community in Britain. According to Gill Furniss MP, Shadow Postal Services Minister " The next Labour Government will end the closures of our Post Offices and give communities the ability to shape their high streets and town centres, by strengthening their powers to protect post offices".
PLEASE SIGN THIS PETITION and help to stop these nonsensical closures and sell offs. SIGN NOW TO SAVE OUR POST OFFICE
