Post office closure: We won't be given brush-off

Award-winning sub-post master Harjit Walia's Pebsham premises were packed with protesters when Mr Barker paid a fact-finding visit last Friday.

Commander John Allen had written to the MP seeking his support in contesting closure.

Commander Allen told the gathering that he had written to the Post Office pointing out the hardship that elderly and disabled people in Pebsham would suffer if it closed.

But what really annoyed him was that when he wrote seeking a meeting to discuss the figures he received a scarcely-polite brushed-off.

"All we said was 'Can we have a meeting, just a small informal meeting with four or five people with a Post Office official to look at the facts and figures?'

"If it is apparent to people who are used to running a business that the sub-post office cannot continue, well OK we'll accept it. But we won't be given the brush-off like a load of dogs!"

Commander Allen said 5,000 people lived at Pebsham and the community would soon have 4-500 students at the new Bexhill College. He couldn't believe that a sub-post office wouldn't pay.

The MP told the packed shop: "I am really impressed that so many of you have turned out on a weekday and in very inclement weather to voice your concern.

"I must say I am very concerned as well. It is incomprehensible to me that a community as large and as vibrant as this one here should have any danger of losing its sub-post office.

"It is not as if there was another one up the road in competition. It looks to me as if the Post Office have taken an arbitrary decision based on their decision to close a huge number of branches rather than on the business case.

"It seems absolutely disgraceful that the Post Office, which is a linch-pin of the community and holds the community together can fail the community like this."

Mr Barker said: "I shall write to Alan Leighton, the chairman of the Post Office, and ask for a meeting where I and Commander Allen and one or two other members of the community can view the business case.

"As Commander Allen says, 'Let's see the figures.' I really do think it s classic example of a bureaucracy riding roughshod over community."

He added to applause: "I am committed to post office branches. Let's see what we can do. It is not in my power to more but I will take it all the way."

Worried residents told the MP that a taxi into Bexhill costs 6 return. One pensioner said: "Its our money and we are having to spend money to get at it!"

Cllr Charles Clark said Harjit Walia lost the income off handling 300 child benefit payments when the Post Office changed the system.

A pensioner showed the MP correspondence where the Post Office claimed Pebsham people would have only a half-mile extra to travel to get to the main Post Office in Devonshire Square. It had since conceded that the true distance was one and a half miles as the crow flies.

"We are not crows!" he told the gathering.