AN INQUIRY is being launched into the Post Office closures which saw 24 shut in East Lancashire.

The National Audit Office will look at the effect on vulnerable people and whether new outreach services have done anything to fill the void after the services closed.

The Government's decision to axe the post offices led to a concerted protest campaign by several local user groups.

Campaigners welcomed the investigation, but stressed that for many offices, it could be a case of too little too late.

Jim Latham, of Communities Against Post Office Closures, said: “I hope this report underlines the badly thought out, impossible conditions the Government has put on this programme.”

The investigation will focus on the criteria set for the closures by the Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, formerly the Department of Trade and Industry.

The report will be examined by Parliament in 2009.

The Lancashire Telegraph ran a campaign to save the post offices and handed over petitions with more than 1,200 signatures.

A six-week public consultation into the closures was held, but bosses spared outrage by saying they did not feel petitions "carried much weight".

And this spring the axe fell as the 24 post offices closed across East Lancashire in a bid to cut the £4m-a-week the network was costing the Government.

Last month a study by Help The Aged claimed that 130,000 pensioners in Lancashire had been affected by the closures.

Nationally 2,500 post offices are to close.

Figures suggest that Lancashire has seen more than a quarter of its post offices close since 2003.