THE parish council at Holcombe Rogus is pressing the Post Office to reverse its decision to drastically reduce the hours it opens.

The post office in a kiosk the village shop at Pound Hill had been run by postmistress Shirley Hewitt for 15 years until she retired and the post office closed on December 22.

It had been open 9am-1pm on weekdays, or 20 hours a week, but now the Post Office is consulting on plans to re-open it for just two hours on a Tuesday morning, with the consultation set to end last Wednesday.

The parish council says in a letter to the Post Office: “In our view, reducing the service by 90 per cent will not serve the needs of our community.”

Post Office area manager Matt Walls said in an email to the chairman of the village hall committee in November that the new service would not be designed to replace the former service but would be enough for customers who could not travel elsewhere.

The parish council adds, among other points, in its response to the consultation: “This [the new] level of service is wholly inadequate. This is guaranteed to drive away customers and would ultimately lead to complete closure.

“The current proposal ignores the requirements of local businesses and the requirements of our Primary School, who need post office services on an almost daily basis.

“Having canvassed opinions in the community we consider that to have any meaningful service our post office needs to be open for a minimum of three mornings per week for a minimum of three hours.

“We have an ageing population in the village which will mean that access to the post office service is likely to become more important. The bus service to the village is only a single bus once a week on Fridays.

“We have only one small shop in Holcombe Rogus and no shops in Hockworthy, Burlescombe or Westleigh. The council is very concerned that the drastic reduction in service proposed by Post Office Ltd will adversely affect the village shop.”