MORE than one in ten post offices in the Vale of York shut in the five years to 1999, the Countryside Agency revealed today.

And the closure rate was almost as bad - at between five and ten per cent - in Ryedale, Selby and the Scarborough and Whitby constituency.

York was better off, with a 2.5 per cent reduction in the post office network between 1995 and 1999.

The figures, published in the agency's report The State of the Countryside 2000, led agency chairman Ewen Cameron to warn: "Behind the rosy image of the rural idyll lie some very real problems of rural isolation."

The closure statistics may bolster the Evening Press Counter Attack campaign to save remaining post offices from the axe.

Vale of York Tory MP Anne McIntosh warned today that the closures would accelerate unless the Government scrapped plans to stop paying benefits and pensions over the counter at post offices.

"With few villages having banks, if the post office is under threat I don't know how life in the rural community will be viable."

She added that she felt Trade and Industry Secretary Stephen Byers was pre-occupied with the big issues such as Rover and Ford, without realising just how many people were employed through the Post Office.

She understood that one of the post offices to close recently in the Vale was at Kilburn.

Selby's Labour MP, John Grogan, said 20 per cent of Post Offices had disappeared over the past 20 years. "This is a trend we must stop."

He was delighted by recent Government moves to make it possible for rural post offices to be given subsidies, saying this represented the best way of stemming the closure tide.

Meanwhile, the agency's report has mixed conclusions about other aspects of country life.

It claims that rural folk have more confidence in the police than people in cities and are less concerned about falling victim to crime and feel safer on their streets. But this view might be questioned in the furore following the life sentence imposed on farmer Tony Martin for shooting dead 16-year-old burglar Fred Barras. The report also says:

Traffic is rising faster on rural roads

People living in the countryside are as healthy if not healthier than urban dwellers.