The Daily Mail has reported that more than 3,000 rural post offices face ‘armageddon’ if the Government does not step in to subsidise a £50m funding hole this week

Chancellor Rishi Sunak MP (Con) was urged to guarantee a subsidy, which will end in April 2021 to avoid ‘cutting the heart out of villages up and down Britain’.

Many post offices shops are given a special status as the rural communities they serve are not big enough to enable them to make a profit.

The 3,100 village post offices, protected as the ‘last shop in the village’, have been devastated by the pandemic.

Hundreds of physical branches have been replaced by part-time post offices set up in churches, pubs and vans.

In total there are now 1,633 of these ‘outreach’ services in the UK - or one in seven of all post offices - up from 803 in 2009.

The report explains how post offices ‘sit at the heart of rural life’ and have performed a vital role in lockdown providing a friendly face and basic provisions to vulnerable customers unable to travel on public transport.

Campaigners have long argued that older customers are often unable to use internet banking, or that poor internet connections in remote areas make surfing the net near impossible.

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The Daily Mail - Post offices in £50m plea: Bosses say 3,000 rural branches face 'armageddon' without extension of annual subsidy