Minster thanks postmasters for Covid efforts

In a letter, Skully wrote: “Since March last year, postmasters and their staff have worked tirelessly to ensure vital post office services continue to be made available to communities across the country, providing a lifeline to customers and businesses.

“While the restrictions and precautions are similar to previous lockdowns, this lockdown is different as there is a clear end goal. The fundamental change for the whole country is the progress that has been made on vaccinations. We are now rolling out the biggest vaccination programme in our history and the prime minister set out how we plan to accelerate the pace of vaccination to ensure everyone in the top four priority groups is offered a vaccination by mid-February 2021.”

In addition, he thanked postmasters for following the government’s guidelines as part of the national effort to fight Covid-19.

He added: “I would urge you to continue to take safety precautions to protect yourselves, your staff and your customers. The government also recently announced the expansion of community testing across England to help identify more positive cases of Covid-19 and ensure those infected isolate, protecting the key workers like yourselves who cannot work from home and deliver our vital services. We will keep Post Office Ltd and the National Federation of Sub-Postmasters updated with further details on how this will run.”

Skully also congratulated Keith Rutherford, postmaster of Colonsay Post Office, who was recognised in the New Year’s Honours list.