UNDER fire from everyone, from customers to government ministers, over the closure of 171 of its rural branches, Barclays Bank deserves much of the criticism. But it may yet earn a pat on the back for its placatory ploy if it triggers the rescue of the threatened country communities which today it is accused of helping to destroy.

It is not that Barclays has suddenly been overcome by social conscience in signing a last-minute deal with the Post Office to provide basic banking services in most of the areas where it is pulling the plug.

The closures are, after all, the result of hard-nosed economies that put the balance sheet before service to customers.

And for that -- and coming just as its bosses are revealed as being due huge pay increases -- Barclays warrants all the criticism it is getting. Yet, this tactic of making banking services available at Post Offices could be the very opportunity that the endangered rural post offices need to help them survive as their viability is threatened by the government's drive to have more benefits paid into people's bank accounts rather than in cash over the counter.

It may be that the boom in telephone banking and the cash-machine explosion has made many bank branches increasingly uneconomic to run.

Indeed, the wholesale closures by Barclays today are only another symptom of a shut-down syndrome that has already become manifest here in East Lancashire's smaller towns.

But the fact is that smaller and remote communities are threatened with decline when they lose the sort of personal services traditionally provided by banks and post offices.

It is this worrying process that this back-hand boost for post offices could help to stem -- if the government has the sense to let them make the most of it by lifting the threat to their core business and viability by letting them remain major agents in the benefits system and, in turn, the banking system.

As a mass 'Save Our Post Offices' lobby of Parliament heads for London next Wednesday, ministers should maximise this opportunity themselves.

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