Post offices in district towns and villages axed (From Witney Gazette)

Post offices in district towns and villages axed

3:00pm Tuesday 5th February 2008 in Witney By David Horne

THE north and eastern parts of Witney will have no full-time neighbourhood post offices under closure plans announced today.

The West End store and post office has been earmarked for the axe, leaving just the main one in Market Square and the sub-post office on the Burwell Farm estate.

The district's other major town, Carterton, also faces losing the Stanmore Crescent outlet, in the Spar Naafi shop, and already hundreds of people have signed protest petitions.

Wootton, near Woodstock, Combe, and Tackley are also threatened in the rural villages of West Oxfordshire. There is now a six-week consultation period for appeals.

It emerged yesterday, however, that other villages could also face threats to their post offices, with limited opening times and even a mobile van service.

Barry Norton, leader of the district council, said that he and Witney MP David Cameron had been told in a meeting with Royal Mail senior managers that Great Tew, Chadlington, Great Rollright, and Enstone were in the firing line for limited service.

"I think what has so far been released is the tip of the iceberg," he said.

He believes that Witney will be hard hit, particularly pensioners on the Madley Park estate, the Hailey Road area, and Cogges.

He said: "The queues at the main post office are still as bad as ever, and they are only going to get worse. Pensioners will have to walk even further.

"In recent years, we've already lost post offices at Cogges, west Witney, and the Smiths estate.

"I can't see how it will improve at the main office because the building cannot expand, and there is limited counter space."

But Jean El-Shaharkawy, manager of the West End post office, said closure was 'inevitable'.

"It is not viable. The footfall in the shop has fallen, mainly because of all the traffic now coming down this part of town. There are no stopping places for passing cars.

"My customers have been really supportive, and I appreciate that. But the shop could not survive without the post office."

Hundreds of customers, many of them RAF families, are fighting to save Carterton's Stanmore Crescent outlet - one of only two in the expanding town, and heavily used by wives of servicemen from RAF Brize Norton.

They are allowed to send parcels up to two kilograms free to their husbands in Afghanistan and Iraq under a Ministry of Defence concession.

Melanie Kelly, who runs the post office with Wanda Hugget, said yesterday: "A lot of people are angry we're now in line for closure, especially the RAF wives.

"They send all kinds of things, treats for their husbands out in dangerous places, like confectionery, shaving foam, magazines, teabags, the sort of things they can't get out there.

"The Co-op, the only other post office in town, supports us, because they already have queues up to 40 minutes long. That's why we're so well used.

"It's not just the RAF - and the base commander Group Captain Malcolm Brecht says he is going to write in protest - it's the pensioners as well.

"We've got 35 sheets of names on a petition, and many of them are also pensioners.

"We've already written to our MP, David Cameron, to back us."

The Combe post office, not attached to a shop, is open only three days a week, and, according to Derrick Millard, ex-Postwatch area co-ordinator, closure was expected.

Mr Millard, who lives at nearby Stonesfield, said: "Overall, I think we've got away lighter than I expected for a rural area.

"But the loss of the one at West End, Witney, and the one at Wootton I can't understand.

"Wootton has 543 people, but nearby Glympton, with just 80 people, has escaped closure."

"West End serves the whole of the north of Witney, and it will just mean more people queuing up at the main office in the centre of town, with longer waits for service. I can just see more traffic to get there and Witney becoming more clogged up."

At Wootton, Pam Jones, shop manager, said: "The shop and post office is the focus of the community. Everyone is talking about it.

"The shop without the post office would be viable but I think it would be tragic for the village."