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Post Office battle stepped up

From the Abingdon Herald, first published Thursday 27th Jul 2006.

MORE than 12,000 Oxfordshire pensioners could face difficulties getting money from their pensions after the Government moved a step closer to scrapping a Post Office payment method.

The Post Office Card Account (Poca) was introduced in 2003 to increase security of payment of pensions and other benefits.

The Government wants to axe the scheme in 2010 and has published the results of a series of pilot projects, which suggest pensioners and benefit claimants will be happy to see that happen.

Customers whose benefits were switched from their card accounts to bank accounts were reported to be happy with the move.

But in Oxfordshire, where 12,400 pensioners use Pocas to receive their weekly payments, there is growing opposition to the plans.

Sheena Palmer, the Watlington postmistress who is president of the Oxford and Bicester branch of the National Federation of SubPostmasters, is leading the campaign in the county and said: "There are plenty of people who remain extremely happy with their Post Office Card Accounts and do not want them to be scrapped. They work well."

The campaigners fear elderly people will be reluctant to open bank accounts and use cash machines.

The anticipated loss of the accounts has also triggered separate concerns that older people may stop using their post offices, sending many rural and small branches to the wall.

Mrs Palmer added: "It would be the death of smaller post offices. Villages are dying on their feet as there's just no point of social contact for a lot of people when the post office goes."

Ministers have argued that many pensioners already have bank accounts and say Pocas were only supposed to be a temporary measure to encourage the elderly to move from the old system of booklets and cash over the counter to bank accounts.

Pocas also cost the taxpayer £1 for every transaction compared with the one penny it costs to transfer a benefit payment directly into a bank account.

Oxfordshire MPs Boris Johnson, Tony Baldry and Ed Vaizey are among more than 380 MPs who have signed a Parliamentary motion calling for a review of plans to abolish Pocas.

Yet work and pensions minister James Plaskitt last week insisted the pilot projects, held in February and March, proved that dropping the accounts would leave customers more satisfied with the service offered by the Post Office.

He said: "Once customers had moved from the Post Office Card Account and become used to their new routine, the vast majority 85 per cent were happy using a bank account rather than a Post Office Card Account."

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