Public and Commercial Services Union

South Cumbria and North Lancashire branch action taken in respect of the campaign against the closure of the three tax offices of Barrow, Kendal and Lancaster.

Petitions are underway in all 3 offices and over 500 signatures have been received to date on paper. An online petition  has also been set up at and currently has over 100 signatures.

Meetings have been held with local MPs. This has resulted in regular contact between branch President Angus Flockhart and the Lib Dem MP for Kendal Tim Farron and Mr Farron tabling EDM1893 in Parliament against the closures which received some support from other MPs. Lancaster staff members have met both the Lancaster MP Ben Wallace and Morecambe MP Geraldine Smith (many staff members in the Lancaster office live in the Morecambe constituency). Both Ben Wallace and Tim Farron met HMRC officials to raise our concerns at the recent party conferences. Ben is also intending to table an Adjournment Debate now that the House is back in session. We have also asked him to raise a Freedom of Information request to get the amount of saving to be made from closing our office as we understand that this is no longer given in the impact assessments following the final decision announcement.

Geraldine Smith is a member of the Public Accounts Committee and took the opportunity recently to raise the issue of the closure of Lancaster office when Dave Hartnett and Mike Clasper were in front of the Committee on 8 October 2008 –   find out more watch the debate  from approx 1 hour in.