Post office numbers

As of March 2022, there were 11,635 post office branches in the UK.

Trends

Between March 2021 and March 2022, the number of post offices rose by 1.9%, returning to around the number seen in March 2020.

Between 2009 and 2020 the number of post offices in the UK remained reasonably consistent. Over the longer term (since the early 1980s) the number of post offices has almost halved.

In return for its government funding, the Post Office is committed to investing in the network, and maintaining around 11,500 branches with no further substantive reductions.

Location of post offices

Over the last decade Northern Ireland has seen the most growth in the number of post offices, at 4.6%, and Scotland has seen the greatest fall at 6.4%.

The number of both rural and urban post offices has been relatively stable since 2009.

Types of post offices

At the end of March 2022, there were

• 9,617 agency branches, 83% of the network.
• 1,901 outreach services, 16% of the total network.
• 117 Crown branches, 1% of the Post Office Network.

There has been a significant rise in the number of outreach services since 2000 – going from less than 1% of the total in 2000 to 16% of the total network in the latest figures.

The number of Crown branches has also fallen significantly over the period.

Further information

A data file is attached to the landing page for this briefing which gives trend data for overall numbers, numbers by contract type, numbers by urban / rural split and numbers by UK country and region.

Further details about Post Office Ltd are given in the Library Note The Post Office.

Post offices in each constituency

A full list of Post offices by constituency has been made available to the Library by the Post Office Ltd, since 2002. These lists are copyrighted to the Post Office and for that reason the Library is only able to provide them to Members and their staff.

A table with the numbers of post offices by constituency Post offices by constituency is available via the Parliamentary intranet only.