Town may lose post office

TELSCOMBE Cliffs residents face the loss of their post office if a new sub-postmaster and premises are not found by the end of February.

The Post Office revealed this week that current sub-postmaster Edward Cresswell had resigned and would be closing his South Coast Road shop, opposite the Telscombe Civic Centre, on February 28.

The shop has been Telscombe Cliffs Post Office since 1965.

Mr Cresswell, who has run the post office for 13 years, confirmed his landlord had other plans for the shop and the lease would not be renewed.

Lease problems with the shop have been on-going for a number of years. Mr Cresswell tried to find new premises in 2000 by attempting to rent space at the new Telscombe Civic Centre. But costs of converting the building made this impossible.

The Mayor of Telscombe, Roy Goodall, said he hoped every effort would be made to find a convenient replacement quickly.

'I hope an alternative site can be found as soon as possible. It would be a terrible loss to the community and cause tremendous problems, particularly for the elderly. I very much regret it closing.

Customers

Post Office retail line manager Paul Simmonds said: 'We know our customers in Telscombe Cliffs rely on access to our valued and trusted services and will be advertising the vacancy in the hope of finding somebody suitably qualified to open a new post office as quickly as possible.

'We d urgently like to hear from potential applicants, with premises available. The sooner people contact us the quicker we can get on with exploring the possibilities.

A Post Office spokeswoman added: 'The new post office could be in existing retail premises, a pub or even someone s garage. It could be nearly anything. We are very flexible about how we offer the service.