POST OFFICE FACILITIES, NORTHWOOD HILLS (Hansard, 22 April 1955)

§ Mr. F. P. Crowder (Ruislip-Northwood)

The subject I propose to raise this afternoon is one which is causing my constituents great concern. It is the question of a Crown post office in Northwood Hills. My constituency lies only 16 to 18 miles from London. It is an area which has been highly developed in recent years, particularly in the years between the wars and after the recent war. In particular, the area of Northwood Hills which adjoins North-wood and Pinner is one which has grown most recently and, therefore, is most in need of this service.

We first started negotiating with the authorities in this matter as long ago as October, 1953. It was then that the Clerk to the Urban District Council of Ruislip and Northwood wrote to the Head Postmaster at Harrow suggesting—and it was an ideal opportunity which was sadly missed—that as the sub-post office in Joel Street was being closed, consideration might be given, instead of building a new Crown post office, to turning those premises when vacated—which they were—into a Crown post office. An assurance was given that the Postmaster-General would continue to provide the best possible facilities at Northwood Hills, and that request was put on one side.

In July, 1954, a further communication was made to the Head Postmaster at Harrow, again drawing attention to the possibility of using these premises. A reply was received stating that considerable capital expenditure would be needed to adapt them, and that the authorities would undertake to provide reasonable postal facilities at Northwood Hills.

In November, 1954, the Northwood Hills Residents' Association wrote to the Postmaster-General supporting the efforts of the council in this matter. They complained, in particular, of the hours of business being insufficient, and that the sub-post office was closed during the lunch time and on Wednesday afternoon, 582 that it was not open so early in the morning or so late in the afternoon as the Pinner post office.

Since then, having given up on that score, other things have been tried and other suggestions have been made. After a meeting which took place with Mr. Marriage, who is general manager of Gosdens Ltd. who look after this matter on 15th March this year, the whole question was gone into with him to see whether or not a solution could be arrived at without the necessary heavy capital expenditure. He explained that the income they received was based upon the business undertaking, that the premises in his shop had cost over £400 to be fitted out for sub-post office facilities, and that three clerks were employed, one being a fully qualified post office trained clerk, another a senior qualified clerk, and, in addition, a junior clerk, and that the salaries paid, of course, had to accord with the rates of pay as laid down for post office employees.

Mr. Marriage explained that it would not be possible, with the existing staff, to provide lunch hour and Wednesday afternoon facilities because it was necessary for a fully qualified post clerk to be available at all times when the post office was open. The nature of the business undertaken and the method of making returns and entries were such that one slight slip on the part of that clerk could involve the company in a liability to make good heavy sums of money to the Postmaster-General.

He explained that the present salaries paid to the three clerks practically exhausted the income received by the General Post Office. When he was asked whether he could give an estimate of the additional cost which would be incurred by his company in the provision of two fully qualified postal-trained clerks and one junior clerk instead of the present staff, Mr. Marriage said that, together with the overtime which would be required, it would be approximately £250 a year.

It would seem, on the face of it—and I have no doubt that my right hon. Friend will inform me further on this—that for the small sum or grant of £250 from his Department a rapidly growing area such as Northwood Hills could be provided with postal facilities which, Mr. Speaker, you may think it richly deserves and 583 which, for various reasons, it has hitherto had to be denied.

The whole crux of the matter seems to be the fact that there should be two fully qualified postal clerks working in that office so that they can stagger their hours and work with one another, and that will mean, of course, that the post office can be kept open at reasonable hours, opened at the proper time in the morning and kept open until a reasonable time at night, and certain other facilities, which I understand are not now available, can thereby be made available to my constituents.

I am bound to say that of all the correspondence which I have received in the last 3½ years since this Government have been in office—and this may be on account of their remarkably fine record—the predominance has been on this point; and nobody knows that better than my right hon. Friend the Postmaster-General whom, I am sorry to say, I have had to pester with endless requests not only about this matter but also about other matters pertaining to it, namely, the present totally inadequate system of granting telephones and new telephones in the area. I hope I shall not be out of order in mentioning this point, for I consulted my hon. Friend the Assistant Postmaster-General about it before the debate and I understand that he is prepared to answer me about it.

There is a difficulty which, as you will appreciate, Mr. Speaker, may not readily be understood by residents throughout the area. Perhaps I may quote one typical example of these letters. It is a letter from a Mr. Skinner, who lives at 6, Mahlon Avenue, South Ruislip, and who wrote to me on 29th March this year as follows: Just over a year ago I spoke to you at Manor Farm, Ruislip That, of course, was when I was seeing Constituents in interviews— with reference to the very long wait I have had for the installation of a telephone. You asked me to write to you giving you the date of my original application and a brief outline of what had happened since. You then took the matter up with the Postmaster-General and his reply you sent to me. He regretted that I had to be disappointed and kept waiting so long but the shortage of equipment and telephone numbers in the district was so acute that he could hold no hopes for me until the exchange was enlarged. 584 Here is the difficulty: I was content to wait after receiving this explanation, but since then I have discovered that new tenants in houses already equipped with telephones are offered these 'phones irrespective of whether they are on the waiting list or not, taking precedence over other waiting applicants who have been waiting for as long as four years. Quite clearly, however expeditious such a policy is likely to be, as in the law courts, in these matters justice should appear to be done, and it does not appear to be done in instances of this nature.

I am also informed by the Ruislip Residents' Association that they understand that in the past the difficulty of providing an improved telephone service has been due to a great extent to the very heavy demands made on existing plant by British European Airways at Northolt. British European Airways have now left Northolt for some time, but still these many difficult telephone conditions exist in my constituency. The latest and firmest thing I have is dated 15th March, 1954, a letter from my right hon. Friend in which he says: As you know, we have recently been given more money for this sort of work, but there is a big back-log to clear and it is unlikely that we shall be able to work at Ruislip before September, 1955. September, 1955, is not so very many months ahead, I know how Government Departments dislike being tied down to any date, but, after this debate, I should like to be able to put in my Election address that, provided the Conservative Party is returned—which I am sure it will be—the Postmaster-General will undertake to begin this work on the telephones in my constituency in September this year. Of course, if we are defeated, I do not expect the work ever to begin at all. I therefore await the answer of my hon. Friend with every confidence.

§ The Assistant Postmaster-General (Mr. David Gammans)

I should like to help my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip—Northwood (Mr. F. P. Crowder) to write his Election address if I could. First, may I deal with the question of a Crown post office at Northwood Hills. I should like to be able to say that he could have it because I know how strongly he feels about it and what a very strong case he has made this afternoon.

585 But, for reasons I shall try to give, I am afraid it: is impossible, not only for that area, but because of the very extraordinary precedent which would be created if we were to grant it.

Perhaps I had better explain that there are approximately 24,000 post offices in the country, and they are divided into two types. Only 2,000 of the 24,000 are Crown offices—that is offices staffed by civil servants which do nothing but Post Office business. The remaining 22,000 are sub-post offices run by private people. In all those 22,000, of which that at Northwood Hills is one, the post office is generally run side by side with a private business. In that way the overhead expenditure is shared in a very happy manner. If we were compelled to set up Crown post offices everywhere it is perfectly obvious that we could not run the Post Office generally on its present charges. We should have either to increase our charges, or to reduce the number of post offices.

Those dual arrangements of someone running a post office as part of some other business have been in operation ever since the Post Office first started and, on the whole, have worked very happily. That is one of the reasons why in this country we have the cheapest postal rates in the world, and it is the ambition and determination of the Post Office to keep those rates low.

My hon. Friend believes that at North-wood Hills the amount of business transacted is such that we ought to make it a Crown post office. I want to assure my hon. Friend that this is not so. I take it that he is not thinking of a Crown office for purely prestige reasons but because he thinks the volume of business would warrant it. These sub-post offices, as they are called, are paid in accordance with the volume of business which is transacted at them.

As my hon. Friend said just now, the sub-postmaster at Northwood Hills gets a payment from the Post Office out of which he has to pay his clerks. At North-wood Hills the current amount paid for the post office is £1,500 a year, which represents the amount of business which can be done in that area. But, taking the country as a whole there are no fewer than 1,100 sub-post offices where the remuneration is £1,500 a year—or more; 586 in fact we have sub-post offices where the amount of remuneration is double that.

Suppose, for example, that we were to abolish this sub-post office and put up a Crown office. It would mean that, first of all, we should have to bear the cost of a new building—whether it was built already, whether we built it ourselves, or whether we just rented it. We should also have to staff the office with civil servants, and taking one expense with another the best sum I can work out. of what this would cost at Northwood. Hills is an additional £2,600 a year. The fact is that the amount of business transacted there simply would not justify that expenditure.

I hope that I have succeeded in convincing my hon. Friend that, although he may feel that the amount of business at Northwood Hills would justify a Crown post office, in point of fact it would not. Further, if we were to give him a Crown post office and incur expenditure such as I have mentioned, could we justifiably deny that same privilege to the other 1,100 sub-post offices where the amount of business is as great or greater? I think he will see that were we to embark on that policy we should be laying ourselves open to a vast volume of increased charges which we want to avoid—and which I am sure he, on behalf of his constituents, would also wish to avoid.

My hon. Friend mentioned the hours of business. It is true that the office is closed for one hour at midday and for half a day on Wednesdays—although I think it remains open half an hour after the other shops in the locality. I promise to look into the question of hours to see if it is possible to get any variation which may be of some help to my hon. Friend's constituents. But the point is that we have to make it pay. The contractor—the sub-postmaster—has to be assured that if he did keep his shop open for that one hour at midday there would be enough additional people willing to use the office to cover the additional cost which he would be compelled to incur.

I will now try, briefly, to deal with telephones. My hon. Friend's constituency is served by four exchanges—Ruislip, Northwood, Pinner and Field End. In three of them the position is very satisfactory. In fact, in the areas served by the Northwood, Pinner and Field End Exchanges—which incidentally 587 cover parts of constituencies other than my hon. Friend's—the waiting list is only 190, or just over 3 per cent. of the working lines. When we consider that the average for the country is 10 per cent. and that in his constituency it is only 3 per cent. I am sure that my hon. Friend will regard that as not unsatisfactory.

I sincerely hope that with the increased amount of capital which the Post Office now has for telephones we shall be able to make very substantial inroads into the waiting list pretty soon. In the past 12 months, on these three exchanges, 800 people have been put on the telephone. In the next financial year we hope to increase that number to 1,100. A constituent of my hon. Friend's said he had heard of people being provided with a telephone although they had only recently applied. That can very well happen. It is not due to any wangling on the part of the Post Office.

People who want a telephone sometimes happen to live in areas where exchange equipment and cables are available. If the cables are not there and there is no room in the exchange then with the best will in the world, there is very little we can do. Incidentally, we hope to make these three exchanges automatic, but they come fairly low in the programme of converting exchanges to automatic working, and it will be five or six years before that happens.

The real difficulty arises at Ruislip, where I admit the position is bad. There we have 2,000 people waiting to be connected and there, as in other parts of the country, the position has been aggravated by the phenomenal number of people who are asking for new telephones. In Ruislip the number of new applicants has risen from 765 a year ago to an estimated 1,100 during the current year. That is a phenomenal increase in demand. Although my hon. Friend may feel that it is an indication of the general prosperity of the country, I hope that he admits that it does not make the problem 588 of the Post Office in meeting that demand any easier.

During the past year, 410 people were connected to the telephone service in Ruislip, and we hope to increase that number to 1,200 in the current year. What the Ruislip area really needs is an extension of the cables and of the telephone exchange. Three new cable schemes have been planned and the first will be put in hand almost immediately. The extension to the exchange was started some time ago and the first part of the new exchange will be opened at the end of next month. When this work comes to fruition, I hope that in the not too distant future we shall be able to speed up very considerably the rate at which we can put new applicants on the telephone in the Ruislip area.

I think that my hon. Friend will see quite a different situation in a year's time as these schemes come to fruition. Incidentally, Ruislip is an automatic exchange but is outside the London system. As my hon. Friend knows, subscribers on the exchange can dial central London by dialling the figure seven and other figures to follow. We hope in the summer of this year to extend that system so that subscribers will be able to dial direct anybody in the London area up to 12½ miles from Oxford Circus. if that is any consolation to them.

I have dealt as well as I can with the points which my hon. Friend has raised, and I hope that he will be able to accept the reason why it is not possible to provide the Crown post office which he desires. I hope that I have been able to convince him that, with the increased capital for telephones, we shall be able to do better in the near future, certainly in the Ruislip area, than we have been able to do up to now.