Post office protest

Above: Hawnby Post Office

Above: Sonia and Darren Leeming serving a customer at Hawnby Post Office

Above: Jane Buckle being interviewed the day closures were announced

Above: Herbie Lealman at Huttons Ambo Post Office

Above: Hawnby Post Office petition

Above: Tony Hodgson at Slingsby Post Office

FROM Bradford to Ryedale and the Yorkshire Wolds, and many postcodes in between, you may have been hearing hollow laughter of late. It has been at its loudest during a TV advert proclaiming ‘the people’s Post Office’.

Joan Collins and Westlife are among the celebrities wheeled-out to promote ‘more than a just brand, but a British institution’, to the accompaniment of Land of Hope and Glory. The timing of the ad campaign has been less than marvellous. Its launch last October coincided with a series of strikes by Royal Mail staff and amid nationwide protests over plans to close 2,500 branches of this same ‘British institution’ by 2009.

In one area alone, covering York, Selby and much of North and East Yorkshire, 50 post offices are scheduled for the axe, mainly in rural areas where often they are the principal lifeline of their community. To employ Land of Hope and Glory to help promote a diminishing service is a particular irony, because in other ways its sentiment resonates strongly in some of the very places most affected. Take, for example, Hawnby, deep within the Hambleton Hills and North York Moors National Park, and part of the estate of the Earl and Countess of Mexborough. Patriotism clings easily here – in the 12th century church are framed pages of a newspaper from 1916 listing the names of locals killed in action, from aristocrats to farmworkers.

Today the hamlet has a population of 60 and another 200 live within its orbit. Hawnby is believed to have had a post office since 1854, and despite a petition aimed at reversing the decision, is probably only weeks away from losing it. It would be yet another blow following the foot and mouth outbreak of 2001 which decimated the area’s livestock, and the devastating flash flood of three years ago.

For a village which lost its school, has no public transport, whose phone box has been out of order for months and where mobile phone signals can’t reach into its hollows, the prospect of losing the post office intensifies the sense of isolation. It is also a personal blow for Darren and Sonia Leeming. They moved to Hawnby from Gildersome, near Leeds, seven years ago for the chance to work for themselves, and paid £25,000 for the business and its goodwill.

Their concern is that without the trade the post office attracts, their little shop and the tea room they’ve added (‘muddy boots and bums welcome’, says the sign), won’t be sustainable. There are also practical consequences for the villagers, particularly elderly residents with no independent means of collecting their pensions from Helmsley, a round-trip of 13 miles, or Thirsk, twice as far.

Another option would be Kepwick, across the hills but for that journey involving rough tracks, they would need a tractor. The Leemings, who have two young sons, have even offered to forego a salary to maintain the service – they currently receive £45 a week – but the Post Office insists there is no alternative to closure and will give them the minimum compensation of £8,000.

As an alternative it is offering Hawnby a weekly, two-hour mobile service, which may help to reduce costs on behalf of the government but takes no heed of the social implications – the idea of community which a post office helps reinforce. A day spent among others on the hit list in rural North Yorkshire confirmed the extent of the dismay but also the financial pressures post offices are under and the necessity to broaden the appeal of the surviving branches. The network is said to be losing more than £3m a week and planned cutbacks are set against a background of falling customer numbers, changing consumer behaviour and a decline in traditional services such as government-based business.

In part this has been self-propelled. Supermarkets, for instance, now handle TV licences, and in the pre-Christmas period some stores were able to offer postage stamps at a discount. If he’d done the same, Herbie Lealman would have been sacked. He’s been postmaster at Huttons Ambo, three miles from Malton, for 36 years, and his father did the job before him. The post office is combined with a shop and such is their value locally, allied to Herbie’s personal stamp, he was awarded the MBE in 1999 for services to the community. He talks of village post offices being gradually cut down as other retailers have been given access to much of their core business. On the other hand that impact has been partially offset by the growth of trading via the internet, meaning more parcels to handle.

Like colleagues elsewhere, Herbie doesn’t know if his shop will be viable on its own. ‘We’ll have to wait and see,’ he says. ‘A post office brings in other business we might not otherwise get.’ It’s not only the elderly in Huttons Ambo who will miss having postal services on their doorstep. They are sharing the fate of those in nearby Whitwell, Westow and Welburn.

Another regular customer, Mo Hayward, says: ‘I do all my post office work here and it’s not just a question of convenience. Herbie’s shop sells everything from wallpaper paste to firewood, papers and gin. Plus, nothing is too much trouble for him and it’s a great place for a natter and to catch up on the news. ‘Losing the post office would be bad enough, and if the shop was to follow as a result, the village would be seriously diminished. You can’t express the meaning of all that on a balance sheet in London.’ There is similar anxiety in Ryedale. At the moment Slingsby regards itself as a complete village with a wide age range. Among its amenities are a school, pub and a green with a maypole but the post office in Tony Hodgson’s shop is doomed. The fear is that its departure will gradually lead to others.

He says: ‘The Post Office nagged me to install the branch in my premises when the postmistress across the village retired 10 years ago. So what happened to consistency? We’re the only one in a six-mile radius and it’s a busy facility. The Post Office’s national slogan has been “use it, or lose it”, and plenty do use it during its 36 hours opening a week – not just villagers but people staying in holiday cottages and caravan sites. In the end it hasn’t saved us. Can my shop survive on its own? Time will tell.’

If Mr Hodgson is baffled by the closure decision, the 78-yearold postmaster at Wass is philosophical about his fate. He’s been there 26 years and is only a couple of miles from alternative post offices at Ampleforth and Coxwold. In recent times he’s kept his branch-cum-shop open more as a social service than a business, but the population has changed and the affluence of newcomers has meant he’s needed less and less. ‘There are only 40 dwellings and to my knowledge only one person in the village doesn’t drive. There have been occasions when I’ve sat at my counter all day and not had a single customer,’ says the postmaster, who didn’t want to be named in case it brought a rebuke from his employers. No such reluctance at Jasmine House, the location of the post office in Nunnington and the home of retired vicar Max Timbrell and his wife Margaret. Actually, a stranger wouldn’t know the former wash-house adjoining their cottage fulfils the role 11 hours a week, spread over three days, because the couple removed the post office sign for security reasons following armed break-ins elsewhere.

Margaret, who is 68, took over the branch seven years ago when no one else was willing to do so. She has her regulars and provides pensions, a bit of banking, and handles a fair number of parcels, ‘but fewer people write letters these days.’ Equally important, she argues, ‘it’s a good place to exchange news. We’re not a gossip-shop but we are a social focal point. For the elderly in particular it’s a comfort knowing we’re here. ‘I’m sad to be closing but my anger is directed mainly at the decision to shut down the one in Hawnby.

It’s not just a vital amenity there but also the business and home of a couple with a young family who’ve put everything into it. ‘That’s not the case with us although Nunnington won’t be the same once we’ve shut. I’ve always felt I wouldn’t want to live in a village without a post office.’