Orkney Post Office shutdown shows no lessons have been learned from Horizon scandal – Alistair Carmichael

You might think that the Post Office, as a public organisation, or Universal Office Equipment (UOE), as their franchise operator of choice, should perhaps have made some sort of official announcement of what was happening and why, before customers came to the branch to find a locked door and a hasty note.

This week’s revelations, however, are just the capping off of a degraded service overseen by UOE and tacitly permitted by Post Office management. It is as clear a demonstration as you could ask for that those at the top of the Post Office have learned nothing from the Horizon scandal of past years.

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A deep-seated cultural problem

Horizon – and the connected treatment of innocent sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses up and down the country – revealed a deep-seated cultural problem at the top of Post Office management. It laid bare the centralised, computer-knows-best attitude within the organisation, and the lack of respect given to people on the frontline in post offices and sub-post offices around the UK.

If the Post Office have learned their lesson from that scandal, then they have a funny way of showing it. In their eventual public acknowledgement of the Kirkwall closure (with no explanation of when services might resume), the Post Office suggested that we could use alternative sites such as the nearby post office in Shapinsay.

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The fact that, in order to get to Shapinsay’s post office, you have to cross a few miles of seawater did not, it seems, factor into their recommendation. It is the sort of mistake that you only make when you do not understand the community you are supposed to serve.

When the news came through last year that the Kirkwall branch was no longer to be directly managed by the Post Office and would be franchised, the community was assured that this was the right choice to ensure long-term stability, and that all existing services would be protected. This was the future, it was for the best, and we simply had to get with the programme.

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Public ownership must mean something

Over the past year, those claims of stability and reliability have proven to be entirely false, thanks to a private operator which does not appear to have understood the needs and expectations of the community, and Post Office management who do not seem to care about their obligations as a publicly owned organisation.

The direct reason for the closure, it has emerged, is because UOE could not retain enough staff to operate the branch – a damning indictment given that no such staffing problem existed until they took over. If this is what stability looks like to the Post Office or UOE, then I dread to think what instability would be like.

Whatever the excuses and whatever the intentions, the point remains the same – people deserve a Post Office that reflects our needs and has respect for our communities. The Post Office is publicly owned. If public ownership means anything, it must surely mean a requirement to be accountable to the people it serves – and something a little better than a last-minute note in the window.

Alistair Carmichael is the Scottish Liberal Democrat MP for Orkney and Shetland