Mel Stride on Community
At the time of writing, the details of some of the post offices that are likely to be closing in Central Devon are beginning to circulate. Across the county we can expect around 18% to sell their last stamp in August. This is extremely depressing news.
Post Offices lie at the heart of our local communities and for our elderly in particular they represent a vital resource. For many villages the Post Office runs alongside the sole village shop and when the one goes the other often follows. For many who live in remote rural areas and who are dependent upon scarce public transport roundtrips in and out of towns are prohibitive. The Rural Advocate, Stuart Burgess has recently presented his second report to Gordon Brown and makes much of the importance of ensuring that the elements that support vibrant local communities are encouraged and protected. That doesn’t just mean post offices of course; it includes local shops, banks, pubs, schools, doctor’s surgeries, community hospitals and local businesses. These are amongst the essential building blocks of sustainable communities and where they start to crumble the whole locality is diminished. Thriving communities, of which the local post office typically forms such a vital part, are not just important for our elderly but also for our younger people too. They provide the vital jobs that allow younger people to stay in an area. Allow them to become local mums and dads with children who go to local schools. But alas the runes are not good. There are now around 400,000 fewer younger people (15-29 year olds) living in the countryside than there were 20 years ago whilst the average age of country dwellers is increasing at the rate of 3 months a year. 
With all this in mind I have campaigned particularly hard against post office closures. I feel so strongly about this issue that over the last 12 months I have personally visited many thousands of homes in Central Devon and raised over 13,000 signatures door to door calling on the government to think again. Support has been secured from right across the constituency. From Okehampton in the west to Bradninch in the east. From Chawleigh in the north to Buckfastleigh in the south. I’ve covered an area of over 700 square miles and visited homes, not just in the towns but the smaller villages and hamlets too. The very places likely to be affected the most. I will be presenting this petition to Number 10 shortly. A huge thank you to everyone who signed (if you have not yet done so you still can at www.centraldevonconservatives.com). The other approach I have taken has been to run ‘use it or lose it’ campaigns for specific branches urging local people to make as much use of their post office as they can whilst its viability is being assessed. This has involved producing and distributing by hand over 30,000 letters on behalf of the postmasters of 25 branches. The post offices that have benefited from this campaign include Brimley (where Ian and Marion Wills work so hard – even delivering fresh local produce to your door with free delivery), Buckfast (where Lorraine Lee offers ample free parking), Moretonhampstead (run with great enthusiasm by Chay Mann who I first met on his doorstep in Buckfastleigh when I was campaigning locally for the Buckfastleigh branch), Chudleigh (where Eddie and Jo Haws will even arrange your dry cleaning) and Chagford (where Anne Thorne provides 70 different currencies with just 24 hours notice). My hope is that this approach to rallying local support might just have made the difference to one or two branches that might otherwise have gone. My campaign will continue through the coming consultation period and beyond. 
Another major challenge across Central Devon continues to be anti social behaviour (something about which I have written in previous issues). The police are extremely important in this respect and do some great work (last year I spent an evening out on the beat with my local Ashburton beat manager PC Andy Dudley). But getting to grips with this issue is not all about policing. A myriad of other factors impinge upon this problem much of which is going to have to await a government that has the resolve to take some tough decisions and the intelligence to realise that this is a highly complicated area involving a number of different social and economic issues. But here on the ground what can local politicians do to help? I believe that one very important approach is to support volunteers who are out at the sharp end attempting to build bridges with young people some of whom seem to lack boundaries and in many cases cause problems based on the notion that they ‘have nothing to do’. In December last year I spent an evening with the youth outreach charity the Teenbridge Project in Bovey Tracey meeting children at the back of the Methodist Church and I greatly admire the work they undertake from their travelling bus. When I heard that the bus had given up the ghost I called the Managing Director of Stagecoach and managed to persuade him to very kindly supply a replacement. In an age when bus companies are constantly being pilloried for fares increases and route cuts (in the face, it has to be said, of limited subsidies) it was refreshing to see this company putting something back into the community in such a positive way and I remain grateful to Chris Hilditch (Stagecoach’s Managing Director) for the kindness and generosity that he showed. I found him to be a direct and decent man to deal with. Another way I have tried to help is to encourage local people to volunteer their time and support for local community action and specifically for youth work. A year ago I set up a Community Action Team which has done everything from revamping Okehampton Community Hospital’s gardens, renovating the parish church in Sandford, clearing up a stretch of the river Ockment and planting a hundred metres of hedging in Mill Marsh Park, Bovey Tracey. Shortly we will be renovating a pre-school playground in Bradninch so that local children can enjoy some healthy outdoor exercise in decent and safe surroundings. These are great opportunities to bring people together – especially young people (a little boy even planted one of the hedges with us in Mill Marsh Park on his 4th birthday) – and to put something back into the community. I believe that this approach is one of the most positive ways in which we can nurture (particularly in younger people) what our forebears used to call ‘civic pride’. Another approach is to help other voluntary organisations to recruit volunteers. In Copplestone I have recently launched a campaign to help recruit local people to join Sean Schofield (a young and highly motivated outreach worker attached to the local Methodist Church) to run his youth drop-in centre weekly rather than fortnightly. The hope is that we can broaden the involvement of volunteers from right across the village rather than being overly reliant on members of the church. And that is a worthy goal. For the broader and deeper we can make voluntary community commitment, the more empowered we all become. The more we are able to stand up and speak and act for ourselves. And as the axe falls on our post offices, as we seem to have lost our ability to shape our futures, as we become more distrustful of government and perhaps more aware of the limitations of its agencies and schemes, so that notion becomes more imperative than ever before.