The Save the St Leonards Crown Post Office group have been campaigning since last October.

Public meeting to save St Leonards Crown Post Office on Monday 17 July – please come!

As the result of the announcement that the Post Office intends to downgrade the London Road Crown Post Office in St Leonards, a public meeting has been arranged for Monday 17 July. Erica Smith catches up with the Save the Crown Post Office campaign.

The Post Office’s latest proposal is to rent the building out as a newsagents/post office franchise. The Post Office consultation document claims that the franchised business will ‘offer the same wide range of services’ as the current Crown Post Office. However, local campaigners are concerned that whilst that may be true for an initial period, once the building loses its ‘Crown’ status, there is no guarantee that the same wide range of services will be provided in the long-term.

Mr Selva Muttiah, who runs post offices in Rottingdean, Saltdean and Seaford, has expressed an interest in running the St Leonards Post Office. He also has a background as postmaster of a newsagent/post office counter in Tadworth. The organisers of Monday night’s meeting have invited Mr Muttiah to attend, meet the community, and share his plans and reasons for wanting to take on our Post Office.

The Post Office management is currently running a ‘public consultation’ which ends on 9 August. They say feedback from the consultation will not affect the decision to hand the branch over! You can pick up a consultation document from the London Road Post Office, or participate online. If you follow this link, it will take you directly to a comments box so you can give your views and state any concerns about the ‘proposed branch modernisation’. The Post Office have also promised that there will be a public consultation event, but a date has not yet been announced.

In order to find out more, the Save the Crown Post Office campaigners are encouraging you to come along on Monday night – and bring your friends and neighbours with you. The meeting is at 7pm at the Isabel Blackman Centre, 5 South Street, St Leonards-on-Sea, TN37 6AP.

You can find more about the campaign on Facebook: ‘Save St Leonards Crown Post Office’.

Read the report from two of the campaigners about their visit to Lancing Post Office here.

Also in: Campaigns