Struggling on after post office loss

One year on from the closure of 13 Shropshire post offices there is some hope for the service in rural areas, but village shops are struggling, writes Ben Bentley

"If they do everything they say they are going to do, it will be a dying village."

Those were the words of Jenny Juleff, postmistress at Lydbury North, exactly one year ago when the full list of Shropshire post offices earmarked for closure was published.

A total of 13 non-viable sites were closed altogether and a further 13 were replaced or augmented by scaled-back outreach services, available just a few hours a week.

Sadly we are living in times of cuts and losses. Post offices have joined the list of casualties alongside other community essentials like pubs, schools and even jobs. It's all about adapting to survive.

Lydbury North has been replaced by an outreach service. These skeleton services are run by people like Brian Simmonds, postmaster at Pontesbury, who travels around local village halls and even people's houses, plugging in his portable equipment.

Brian himself runs outreach services in Worthen, Wentnor, Stiperstones, Marton and Acton Burnell, where it has been a year of change for the post office and its users.

Acton Burnell, near Shrewsbury, is the unique position of being a tiny village but with almost 400 international students on the doorstep from Concord College.

Postmistress Rose Jackson says: "It's very frustrating, I've had to turn business away. I cannot do packages over 6kg and students have got to get a taxi into Shrewsbury to send one. The amount of things I can't do – foreign currency, insurance packages, I cannot sell postal orders and I cannot accept payment by cheque. I can't even do fishing licences which we used to do a lot of."

A year on, Rose now views the post office as "doing a service to the community" and that the scaling back of the service was "not well thought out".

Outreach services are either hosted, which means Brian goes into a location and sets up post office services for a couple of hours a week, or they are partnered, such as at Acton Burnell, where the post office could be open all week but with reduced services available.

He holds one at Perkins Beach church hall at Stiperstones, but says: "In the church hall people don't have to go there. It's not like a shop where people might need to go to anyway."

He says that in the wake of the cuts, Stiperstones was running at below 10 per cent of what it was, but had clawed back some trade and was more recently operating at 25 per cent its previous service level.

At Wentnor village shop, the hosted outreach service offers everything that the post office in Pontesbury does, meaning some people actually benefit from a broader range of facilities, such as car tax, National Savings and postal orders among others.

"It's a better service but for fewer hours a week," says Brian, who now gets a queue waiting for him at his specified time on Tuesday mornings.

Janet Peacock, formerly the subpostmistress here but who now just runs the shop, works happily alongside Brian but says she preferred the old way before the cuts.

"We lost quite a few people at first but I put up notices to rally people to use us, and they did, they really supported us. But they would still want it back as it was before."

She says having a post office brings money into the community. The service attracts customers who might spend cash at local amenities such as the nearby campsite which regularly hosts as many people in a modest field as the whole of the local parish does in its entirety.

Personal banking and cash withdrawals can be made here, which although it's only for a few hours a week, is very convenient for campers and villagers.

Rewind 12 months and Janet was worried the post office could disappear altogether, and that scaled back outreach facilities would hit trade in the shop.

"My accountant said take it month by month. It was okay at first but then came the winter, and there are no campers from the site down the road – that was a blow. I thought 'Give it 12 months'." Today Janet is satisfied, if a trifle frustrated, describing the outlook only as 'okay'.

As in other villages now left with an outreach service, customers have made it part of their routine to use the post office services for those few hours.

Customer Peter Vince says: "There are times when I want to post a package and the post office is not open so I have to drive to Bishop's Castle. The downside is that if people have to go elsewhere they will spend their money elsewhere as well."

Post office user Barry Preston, 75, makes sure he gets along on the designated day to draw his pension and says although the outreach service is restrictive "it is a very important service for the community."

And customer Pat Varcoe adds: "It's fine for me because I live nearby but for people living further away it's not as convenient. But it's better than not having a post office at all."

Brian says the outreach service has created a feeling of increased certainty about the future of post office services, but adds that he is on a 12-month contract that could be cancelled at three months' notice.

He says: "I think that with everything that has happened that outreach services are safe. They might even grow."

Lydbury North at one point faced losing its post office at its community shop altogether. At the same time, the future of the village primary school was under threat and locals felt that their community was under siege.

But they fought tooth and nail, helped save the school and salvaged, at least in part, their post office service.

"It's better than nothing," says villager Wendy Falconer. "It's good that it's still here because the bus service is diabolical, so it would be difficult for older people with pensions."

A year on and shop treasurer Terry Couzens is cautiously upbeat. "Because we managed to secure two mornings of outreach service we feel that it is the best outcome for the community and for the shop itself. It's difficult to assess what it would have been like if we'd lost the post office altogether. It's not been a collapse for the village."

But the cuts have left some customers wondering whether it could smooth the way for any future cuts and changes.

'Better than nothing' might be the mantra of communities that at least offer some post office services, but the repercussions of closures are being severely felt 12 months on for the likes of Pam Jennings.

After 27 years, her post office in Aston on Clun was closed on August 18, 2008, a date that sticks in her head as the beginning of a slow decline in her other business – her shop.

"One without the other – a shop without a post office – is hopeless," says Pam indicating an empty shelf that was once a busy counter.

"People would come in and spend money in the shop, or come in and spend money at the post office. I could still do trade because people come in with parcels and say 'I thought you were still a post office'. But it's hopeless. We used to be open 9am to 5.30pm five days a week plus Saturdays. Now I close the shop at lunchtime, but I might close altogether soon."