7. Conclusions
This research was set up to explore why rural communities use their post offices in three communities in Scotland: West Linton, Scottish Borders (accessible rural), Kirkconnel, Dumfries & Galloway (remote rural) and Rogart, Sutherland (very remote rural).
Using a participatory approach, this wide remit has produced two main categories of use of post office services. First, participants in all three case studies use traditional counter services citing 55 services in all. These 55 services were divided into POL's five categories of uses to aid future comparative research. One POL category is the attached retail unit (shop) and, from participants' responses, a clear answer emerged on the sub-objective of this report: what is the relative importance of the retail unit to users? The shop was a predominant and important service in the most remote case study in Rogart in Sutherland, reflecting the overall conclusion that the more remote the post office from other settlements and services the more important the retail unit is to local inhabitants.
The second category evolved from an underlying question of this study: is there a social role to the post offices in rural Scotland, to which the overriding answer was "yes". Five main themes emerged on the social role of rural post offices:
1. In all three case studies the post office provided access to post office services to community members who are restricted from using other services due to their geographical location, regardless of income or physical well being.
2. The post office promotes financial inclusion among these three communities through providing access to financial services where there is no bank or the bank operates two days a week.
3. Accessing these post office services locally is reported to be useful by more vulnerable groups of the communities, such as groups of older people, who draw their pension from the post office, groups of disabled people who cannot always travel far or prefer/require face to face service support and inhabitants with no transport, whether due to lack of income or inability to drive, which is exacerbated by a poor bus services across all three case studies.
4. The post office has been cited as the hub of the community, providing a place to meet and an informal communication network. This was particularly important in Rogart due to the scattered nature of the community.
5. The postmaster and their staff played an important part in the community and in all three studies participants reported the advice and support provided by these individuals went beyond customer counter duties to wider community roles. Their actions are reported to make them figures of trust and created a loyalty to actively using the post office, in particular in Rogart and West Linton, where users commuting to work in Edinburgh have access to other post offices.
Other important, though more indirect, factors which potentially influence the social role of these rural post offices were also highlighted during this study. Two main factors were raised:
- The post office's location in relation to other services supports, and is supported by, other services, effectively in the form of a one-stop shop. For example, in Rogart when an individual stops at the garage or visits the vet then they may make an unplanned stop at the post office.
- The maintenance of a community communication network through the post office was reported to help strengthen communities' structures, in particular in Rogart and West Linton, thereby providing increased community safety and confidence.
Two less reported potential factors were:
- The post office supports the tourist industry through its role as an informal tourist information place and shop.
- In West Linton, two participants reported that access to services locally allowed them to adopt a more environmental form of living and use their cars less.
All issues raised in this report evolved from participants' perceptions of the role of the post office in their lives, though it should be remembered that participants' views have evolved from specific socio-cultural and economic contexts within the three rural community case studies. As a result, these views may not necessarily represent other rural communities' views in similar rural categories in Scotland. However, the participatory process used produces authentic and robust information, which does not evolve from preset criteria and lays out solid initial baseline findings for further discussions around the social role of post offices in rural communities in Scotland, and highlights potential areas for wider research.