10,000 local people denied access to PO account cash

5.00.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Wed 21st Oct 2009

Over 10,000 of Wrexham's most vulnerable people have effectively been shut out of the ATM network by the Government, claims Wrexham Lib Dem candidate Dr Tom Rippeth.

Holders of the basic Post Office Card Account, who receive state benefits and can find it all but impossible to get a regular bank account, are not be able to access their money through the nationwide Link cash machine network.

UK wide over 4 million Post Office account holders will be restricted to using only Bank of Ireland machines in post offices.

Commenting Tom Rippeth said:

"Despite hundreds of thousands of pounds being invested in installing machines in deprived areas we now find that as a consequence of Government incompetence there is now a large set of mostly deprived people who are unable to use them."

He continued: "there is yet another case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing. On the one hand the Government has implemented a Post Office closure programme, which saw Wrexham lose key post offices such as Acton and Rhosrobin. Yet on the other hand they are spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on a system which only lets people access their money through a post office."

Dr Rippeth is calling for a change of heart on the part of the Department of Work and Pensions, which oversees the accounts in conjunction with the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills.

Editors Notes:

1) Based on the proportion of population and the fact that there are 4 million post office card account holders in the UK, there will be about 12,000 post office card account holders in the Wrexham area.