Yeovil Post Office closed for good
In October 2022 the Post Office at Glenville Road in Yeovil shut for “operational reasons”. The Post Office has never been willing to tell the local community what those reasons were. However The Leveller® understands that they were conducting a detailed audit at the Post Office.
At the time it was made clear that this was a temporary closure. In a statement to The Leveller® the Post Office told us: “We are looking to restore service as soon as possible.“
Glenville Road is important not just to the community it serves but also to a number of villages too. Glenville Road Post Office provided outreach services at Chilthorne Domer, Tintinhull, Odcombe, Melbury Osmond and the Mobile Post Office services at Corton Denham, Charlton Horethorne, North Cadbury and Buckorn Weston.
The Leveller has been back to the Post Office on a number of occasions to ask when the Post Office was to reopen. Today however they have confirmed the closure is to be permanent. In a statement to The Leveller they told us: “Post Office has a responsibility for network provision across the UK and we must prioritise our limited funding and resources to support the branch network. Last month, Post Office completed a review of service provision in Yeovil that considers access to services, distance to nearby branches, and customer usage. Consequently, we will not be reopening a branch in Glenville Road. Post Office apologises to customers who are travelling further to access services. There are five Post Offices within two miles, the closest is Hundredstone, which is less than a mile away and other branches are at Cavalier Way, Yeovil, Orchard Street and Yeovil.“
We also asked them about the outreach service to the villages. The fate of these is less clear. They told us: “Glenville Road Post Office also used to provide outreach Post Office services to several local communities. A review is still underway to decide the best way to provide Post Office services to these affected communities.”
“England is a nation of shopkeepers”!
Without contradiction the ‘lamented’ Paddy’ would have given ‘short-shrift’ to this ‘aberration’!
Whither the ‘grass-roots’ Town Councils, pace Bridgwater Bus Station/Glastonbury Road Police Station, Wells etc?
sometime PPC YEOVIL
It’s not just The Leveller® who have been hassling the Post Office for an answer – local Parish Councils had asked what was happening, as had David Warburton (even if some of the communities affected are outside what was his “patch”). Unsurprisingly Post Office Ltd have not been very informative.
It must have been a very, very detailed audit if it started in, let’s say, November and they have only managed to come to decision recently.
I would be extremely surprised if the communities that lost their mobile Post Office have that service replaced.
One point that is not clear from the article is whether or not the “corner shop” that Glenville Road Post Office was situated in is still open.
It’s not only The Leveller® who have been on Post Office’s case. Residents of the communities who are having to manage without the Mobile Post Office (and Liam’s chatty demeanour!) have been on the case, as have Parish Councils and, whilst only some of the communities served by the Mobile Post Office are in what was his “patch” David Warburton was on the case as well. Perhaps Sarah Dyke can take up that challenge? I wonder how Post Office have communicated the closure to the local communities. Certainly they have not communicated with those who complained in October.
The small branch at Glenville Road was closed “for audit” in October and it seems to have taken Post Office a very long time to conduct it and to come to a decision. Certainly, it is no longer a “temporary closure” and the reason seems to have changed.
The bottom line for residents in the affected communities, either near Glenville Road or in the villages it used to serve, is that the many elderly who find it difficult to go to elsewhere in Yeovil, Castle Cary, Wincanton, Queen Camel or Sherborne have to suffer and that is a shame.
Where is the post office at Hundredstone. I thought it closed years ago and it is now a private house
53 Glenthorne Ave,
I can only say that I am truly gutted about the fate of the Post Office at Glenville Road, and about the Mobile Post Office and Outreach services.
It’s been a wonderful eight years running the Mobile Post Office, and I feel that in that time, I had become an important part of each of the villages that I visited.
The real sting to all of this is not being able to say goodbye to the customers and (dare I say,) friends that I have come to intimately know and love in the villages that i had visited.
I hope that, at the very least, the Mobile Post Office service is resumed- as I know firsthand that is it an absolute lifeline to an array of people living ‘out in the sticks’.
To all of my previous customers:
Thank you for the memories, and for making me feel so welcome in each of your villages. I’m just sorry that something so great has fallen so far.
It’s been a pleasure,
-Liam,
AKA ‘The Post Office Boy’
Terribly sad for the local communities who have lost their post office service, but also for the employees who remained and tried to keep the place running as long as possible, but now find themselves unpaid and unemployed.
As someone who worked at the post office, it wasn’t just somewhere to pay bills or get cash etc., it was somewhere that our customers could come and see a friendly face, have a little chat. We could keep an eye out for our vulnerable and elderly customers. We cared. It was more than a job.
I cannot begin to describe how sad I am that the post office is no more, which also means that the shop is no more. Once the post office closed, we didn’t get the customers in, therefore the shop suffered too.
I think the long history of Glenville Rd and Frosts will live on in peoples hearts.
I have a 95 year old neighbour who could manage a trip to the mobile post office when it visited North Cadbury every so often to get cash, bank cheques, buy stamps and post various items. That facility is no longer available to her and many of her friends who are not in a position to get to the nearest post offices in Castle Cary or Queen Camel as that would mean getting a taxi. This was an extremely valuable asset to the local community and I would ask that consideration is given to restoring it. Liam was a wonderful, kind, patient and considerate person to man this service and we still miss him greatly.
Absolutely shocking that an organisation the size of the Post Office has allowed this to happen. The staff at the branch have been treated absolutely abhorrently, continually turning up to work to try and keep things running. No idea when they are getting paid. All those customers who rely on that outreach being let down. No communication at all, just big standard responses and no actual answers. A failed audit! Seriously it’s taken almost a year to come to that conclusion, really? I can only hope that those wonderful employees are compensated appropriately. Being out of work at any time is hard enough, but in this way, just heartbreaking
Odcombe Village Hall houses one of the outreach services so I have been trying, along with Cllr Patrick, to find out when/if it will return. Communication from the PO has been abysmal. We have not even been informed that this decision has been made.
“England is a nation of shopkeepers”?
LEVELLER (Somersets’ largest circulation newspaper) over 3 days an ‘unwitnessed’ hitherto ‘riposte’ begs the question whither Messrs Dyke/Fysh?* If only the latter the same attention to his constituency as his ‘personal-investments’?* Paddy could cut the mustard!
Bring on the General Election a ‘cleansing’ the Augean-stable!
*Marcus John Hudson Fysh is a British politician and former investment manager who became the Member of Parliament for Yeovil in 2015. A member of the Conservative Party, he served as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Exports from September 2022 until 27 October 2022. Wikipedia
https://app.inews.co.uk/full_page_image/page-30-1421/content.html
The sub-postmaster’s been noticeably absent during these proceedings, maybe The Leveller could try contacting them and finding out what they have to say about things? After all, they would have employed the staff working there, not the Post Office, so I’m sure their comments would make interesting reading… If this is how they conduct themselves in the business of running a post office, it would also be interesting to see what involvement they may have in other companies, and how successful (or otherwise) they may (or may not) have been.