PLANS to shut seven post offices in York will be greeted with dismay by the communities they serve.

A local post office offers so many important services to those who live nearby, allowing older people to pick up their pensions with ease, or letting young parents who are weighed down with babies and buggies avoid the long walk into town.

It is worth remembering that in many senses urban areas are in fact made up of linked villages. And in each of these "urban villages", the local post office is a focal point, which offers convenience and a friendly, familiar face behind the counter.

Closing down a post office destroys a trusted service, while also taking away a social meeting place for older people who pop in for their pensions.

On top of that, many of these older people do not trust anyone else and want to continue picking up their pension locally, as they always have done.

If the Post Office does indeed shut down these seven branches as part of a nationwide cost-cutting exercise, it will be guilty of cynical corporate down-sizing - and we should expect better than that.

York MP Hugh Bayley is right to say that the Post Office is "going too far". But many postmasters believe Mr Bayley's Government has caused some of the problems they face by running a £25 million campaign to persuade the elderly to stop picking up their pensions at the local post office.

Counter staff always feared that the campaign, which urges pensioners to have the money paid into a bank or building society, would lead to further post office closures.

It seems that they were right.

But it should not be left there. Make your voice heard by writing to Hugh Bayley. For the price of a stamp, you may yet save your local Post Office from closure.

Updated: 10:00 Thursday, August 19, 2004