Harrogate and Knaresborough MP Andrew Jones officially opened not one but two new-look Post Offices in Harrogate today – and hailed the modernised branches and their longer opening hours as a “boost for the community”.
Mr Jones cut the ribbon at Cold Bath Road Post Office, 109 Cold Bath Road, Harrogate, HG2 0NU, with Subpostmaster Trevor Spurgeon at 09:30. He then put the big red Post Office scissors to good use again at 11:00 as he visited Subpostmaster Ian Bainbridge at Oatlands Mount Post Office, 67 Leeds Road, Harrogate, HG2 8BE.
Andrew Jones MP said:
It’s an absolute pleasure to visit the teams at Cold Bath Road and Oatlands Mount Post Offices today,” he said. “The improved services they now offer are a real boost for the community.
These branches are open for longer, and customers are being served in more modern environments. They look bigger and brighter, and give the staff the best possible platform to serve the people who depend on them.
An awful lot of work has been put into the developments and it’s clear that it has all paid off.
It’s great to see that the Post Office has made such an investment in branches in our area, and across the whole of the UK for that matter. It’s now important that we, as a community, show our support for the Post Office as it moves forward, providing services that support individuals, families and businesses.
The new-look Cold Bath Road Post Office now provides Post Office services from 07:00-17:30 Monday to Saturday and 08:00-12:00 every Sunday – meaning customers benefit from a total of 21 more hours of service per week than they did before the refurbishment in September.
Trevor said of the event at his Cold Bath Road branch:
The opening went really well.
It was brilliant. The only bad thing was the weather – the rain was pounding down for a while.
We’re really happy with the work that’s gone on here. The best words for the new branch are roomy and light – it’s great from the shop point of view, and the extra counter really helps when it’s busy on the Post Office side of things. It’ll be especially helpful when we’re getting very busy coming up to Christmas.
We can serve customers for longer and word is starting to spread. More people are using the extra hours every week.
Oatlands Mount Post Office now opens for an extra half an hour in the evenings six days a week, serving customers from 09:00-18:00 Monday to Saturday.
Ian said:
We just managed to dodge the rain this morning, which was very lucky.
Our refurbished Oatlands Mount Post Office is a lot brighter. We’ve moved things around so there’s a lot more space and it feels bigger, more modern.
We’ve had very positive comments from the customers and now that we’re open for longer we hope they keep coming.
Both branches have been modernised as main-style branches under the Network Transformation programme, the largest investment programme in the history of the Post Office, which has seen over 1,000 branches in the UK converted as new models, offering extended service hours in brighter, more open environments.
Post Office Regional Network Manager Adrian Wales said:
We understand how important Post Office services are to residents in Harrogate and we are confident that the new Cold Bath Road and Outlands Mount branches are meeting the needs of the local community.
This is an exciting time for the Post Office. This change is part of a three-year investment programme, the largest in the history of the Post Office that will see thousands our branches converting to the new models.
The Post Office, now independent of Royal Mail, is the largest retail network in the UK. It is also one of the UK’s fastest growing financial services companies and is developing its online and telephone services.
