Changing times reduces services communities have relied on for years

The Postie Notes by Mark Gilbert

As I pride myself on providing good service and helping people where I can,I feel I should give my personal overview of recent major changes locally.

Do you remember that feeling of sadness and betrayal deep in your stomach when the first “love of your life” just dumped you for seemingly no good reason, (normally in your teens), and you were powerless to convince them that their decision was wrong?

Well, that feeling came back to me and my customers recently when a vital service was withdrawn for no good reason, other than that it was a blanket decision that took no account of this remote area of the Highlands, with no exceptions considered.

Recently, a neighbour of mine was having a sort-out and found a Scottish Postbus timetable from spring 1978, with 120 pages of routes and information, he thought of me and gave it to me.

Susan Macleod drove the last postbus on the Lairg to Tongue route on August 19, 2017, a service that ran for over 38 years. It carried goods, including locals, excited tourists, bikes, farm supplies etc. There were around 200 routes in remote areas of the UK.

Strathnaver Post Office recently closed due to retirement, after Morag had served the community for 40 years and was not replaced.

My local post office in Skerray has also recently closed for good. Rhona, and her family before her, had served the local elderly on a daily basis, for years. But the customers died off one by one, making the physical office redundant, with any potential new customers having their pensions etc., paid straight into their bank accounts, bypassing any other service at the post office counter. This office has also lost its Royal Mail funding for sorting the mail this year.

This year Royal Mail is focusing on changing its business model, from a service-led, to a more cost -effective approach, so the services that our small communities have relied on for so long have ceased.

But the removal of the Rural Newspaper Delivery Service, a paid for service, that allowed local retailers to supply newspapers, groceries and prescriptions for posties to deliver to outlying folk, has hit them hard.

Also, the removal of sorting facilities from local post offices (and the income it generated), has pushed remote posties out into the elements to sort their mail.

I have delivered a lot of newspapers and groceries to my customers. Many of these folk are elderly, and some are housebound and have no online access. Most are at least 15 to 20 miles from a shop of any kind and the nearest Tesco is 40 miles away! These are the people who have supported post offices for years.

I also deliver to four sporting lodges, two of which are owned by close relatives of Queen Camilla. They all took newspapers during the season and King Charles usually visits the lodges during his summer stay in Scotland.

To emphasise the remoteness of the area, I deliver to the Garvault House Hotel, the most remote hotel on the British mainland.

During the Covid lockdowns, we delivered goods and contact to these outlying customers, and although I have only recently(four years later) seen it, there was a letter from Royal Mail thanking us for providing this essential service. What happens next time?

How times have changed, as John (The Post) Mackay, “Postie”, of Newlands in Bettyhill, and a local celebrity as a result, was awarded an MBE in 2010 by the Queen, for delivering to his customers, in all weathers, on the same route that I now cover. He picked up his award in person at Buckingham Palace.

Mark Gilbert is a postman based at Bettyhill.

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