The word on the street is that on 19th February there will be the commencement of a new round of consultation on the proposed Post Office closures. 

This has been variously dubbed 'Operation Reinvention' and was voted for by the Labour Party in Parliament.  The reality is that over 2,500 Post Offices are scheduled to close in this round across England.  That has since been confirmed by Post Watch as being 250 in London and will be approximately 6 Post Offices per London Borough. 

I know most of the Post Offices in this part of London and am at a loss as to which ones they might put forward for closure.  Of course, we could be very lucky and have none appearing on the hit list that will come out, but the flip side of that is that somewhere else will have more closing.

My approach is very simple - the Post Office is a symbol of the community and is highly valued.  It is needed by the elderly, those on low and fixed incomes and provides crucial community services - that is as real here in London as in rural villages.  If a closure is deemed necessary then we would want evidence of working with other public services - perhaps a GP surgery, a council one stop shop - in short a bit of evidence of some joined up thinking.

So we have a waiting game to see where the axe might fall - I am very clear that having got this far I'm not prepared to sit by and see more closures - we have a strong case for keeping out current set of local facilities and it'll be a battle royal if they proposed anything else other than retention.  Of course this sits in the context of the false starts we have had from Royal Mail about re-opening Belsize Post Office (though that situation could change with a bit of shoving) - I suppose the consultation could include the pledge to re-open Belsize Village Post Office (maybe even move it to Haverstock Hill as has been suggested many times...).  It could be good news, the silence is ominous, we know there's an announcement on the way...

We shall see - and very soon it would seem.