Village hall is repackaged as Post Office

A VILLAGE hall in the Westcountry has been transformed into a local post office following the closure of the vital service nine months ago.

Porkellis Post Office in Helston has been closed since last August and like many rural post offices it struggled to find suitable premises to begin operating from again.

Porkellis village hall committee worked together with a Rural Transfer Adviser from Consignia over the last eight months to organise the relocation of the post office.

It will now be run as a satellite service from the village hall three mornings a week by sub-postmaster Jeff Hobden, who currently runs the nearby Rame Cross post office.

Mr Hobden said: “My wife and I volunteered to run the satellite service after the post office closed last year.

“A lot of elderly people in the community were suffering without the service and we felt it was the right thing to do to volunteer to run it.”

With more and more rural communities suffering the loss of their post offices, enterprising villagers have sought alternatives to keep the service going.

A number of pubs, shops and village halls across the region have opened as multi-purpose premises that act as post offices in the last year.

An initiative set up by Consignia last September, appointing the Rural Transfer Advisers, aims to reopen rural post offices that have been closed since April 2000.

Colin Pound, adviser for the TQ, PL and TR postcode areas in the South West, said: “I am delighted that we have been able to find a new home for the post office in Porkellis.

“It is always difficult to find suitable premises – and people to run them.

“We have had to become increasingly innovative in looking for places to accommodate post offices, and this is one example of that.”

Mr Pound, along with 30 other Rural Transfer Advisers across the UK, is responsible for reopening the rural post offices and has successfully relocated services in four villages in his area.
There are plans for six others to be reopened soon.
With the new Rural Transfer Advisers in place an optimistic future seems on the horizon for rural communities desperate to keep their post offices open, a service that Consignia calls “an essential part of everyday life”.
OPENING DOORS: Colin Pound and Jeff Hobden at the opening of the satellite service of Porkellis post office.

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