SIR - I wholeheartedly support the Commission for Rural Communities campaign to create greater awareness of the financial needs of rural people, which highlights community-based solutions to the provision of financial services.

However, community-inspired initiatives to offer an alternative provision of post office services will not be up and running in time to plug the gap left by thousands of closures this year.

Some 2,500 post office branches will be closed by the end of this year and the Government is sitting back allowing the Commission to come forward with its campaign, when instead it should have done everything it could to save neighbourhood post offices.

Such post offices are often the lifeblood of their communities.

The damage does not end with branch closures. Post offices are often housed within grocery or general stores in rural areas and when a branch closes, local people are faced with losing the main - possibly the only - shop too.

The Government will have been responsible for the closure of more than one third of the entire post office network by the next election. It's a second-class service from a second-class Government.

Timothy Kirkhope, MEP Leader of the Conservatives in the European Parliament (MEP, Yorkshire & The Humber) Main Street, Scotton