WITH sub-post offices already closing at the rate of 350 a year, the future of thousands more -- dozens of them in East Lancashire -- was under new threat today as the Post Office announced a £264million deficit, its first loss for 23 years.

Suddenly, that makes it all the more hard for it to subsidise the ones that are struggling -- of which there are estimated to be some 5,000 at present.

But it is not as if this increased threat is solely a product of the immutable laws of economics and relentless progress. It exists because the government puts too low a value on our sub-post offices as vital focal points of communities -- be they villages or urban neighbourhoods.

There is no need to explain the extra role that our sub-post offices have in addition to their official function of handling mail, paying out benefits and so forth as well as being a local shop. They are a part of the British way of life -- a meeting place, a social interchange and a vigilant watchpost that keeps an eye on the more vulnerable members of the community. They are a boon to the old and the lonely and essential to rural areas which have lost all other such outlets in the upheaval of changing work and lifestyle patterns.

It was, surely, governmental disregard for this aspect of the sub-post offices' role that was among the reasons for Prime Minister Tony Blair getting a hostile reception from delegates at the Women's Institute's conference two weeks ago.

After all, it has contributed to the threat now facing post offices, both by deciding to switch benefits and pensions payments to banks -- a function which accounts for 40 per cent of the post offices' business -- and by prompting this huge financial loss through insisting on them installing a £1billion computer system whose main purpose was to handle those payments.

Now nervous of a voter backlash, the government pledges that people can still get their benefits paid at the post office. But, as Ribble Valley MP Nigel Evans today insists, a positive plan to sustain post offices is needed entailing such steps as installing bank machines in them.

The necessity for real commitment now needs to driven home to the government by post office users -- particularly in places where this vital service is under threat.