Revealed: How Post Office drives £280m of additional spending in Yorkshire and Humber shops

On the high street alone, visits to post offices generate over £3bn a year of spending in nearby shops and businesses and nearly £1bn of spending in host retailers as a result of the customers that their post office attracts.

In Yorkshire and the Humber, Post Office trips generated additional expenditure of £280m in other high street shops, which equates to £51 per person.

Post Office and its network of branches supports and sustains nearly 50,000 full-time equivalent (FTE) jobs throughout the United Kingdom, including 4,041 FTE jobs in Yorkshire and the Humber.

The report titled Part and Parcel: the economic and social value of Post Office, highlighted Post Office’s crucial role as part of the underlying economic infrastructure of the United Kingdom and as an enabler of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Post Office is worth almost £1bn overall to SMEs, with nearly three in 10 SMEs using a Post Office once a week to deposit cash and use mails services.

The report found that Post Office has an average economic impact of £5.8m per parliamentary constituency, which is equivalent to an economic contribution of £57 per person.

Out of 650 constituencies, there were 102 constituencies associated with at least £7.5m of UK-wide economic impact and 426 associated with an impact of at least £5m.

Nick Read, chief executive of Post Office, said: “Post Office branches are essential to the high street ecosystem, driving footfall and generating wider nearby economic activity, as well as providing an underlying economic infrastructure that supports SMEs.

The report shows that this economic contribution is felt in every corner of the country, and across each parliamentary constituency, supporting 50,000 jobs, and generating an aggregate economic impact of £4.7bn every year.

“Post Office is essential for the shopkeepers, traders, and nascent businesses of the nation as a whole, who rely on our continued presence on high streets in towns and villages everywhere.”

James Cannings, economic consultant at London Economics and one of the report’s authors said: “Post Office is the backbone of the UK’s economy, supporting economic value through working as an important enabler for businesses.

"It also plays a key role in keeping the UK’s day to day commercial activities alive by creating a trusted anchor on high streets and by generating a livelihood for Postmasters."

The report also found that the social value to consumers alone delivered by the Post Office was 16.5 times greater than the funding received from government.

The annual social value of Post Office as a whole to consumers is as much as £3.8bn.