Stradbroke Post Office "temporarily closed"

As the Diss Express report Stradbroke Post Office is “temporarily” closed. It is still not clear exactly what happened but following a visit by post office auditors the post office was closed for “operational reasons”.

Carol Smy, Stradbroke Parish Clerk is quoted as saying:

If you do not have your own mode of transport, it’s not necessarily that easy to go elsewhere to get to a post office.

We have been in contact with the Post Office to find out what is going on, but have not been given any timings as to when a service will reopen in Stradbroke.  

Local MP Dan Poulter has also intervened and is quoted by the Diss Express as saying:

I was extremely concerned to hear about the closure of Stradbroke Post Office, which has caused much distress to many of the village’s elderly residents who regularly use the facility and are unable to travel elsewhere to access key day-to-day services.

Local post offices lie at the centre of our communities in Suffolk, particularly in rural villages like Stradbroke, and I have written to the chief executive of the Royal Mail to find out what contingency measures are being put in place and to ascertain exactly when a permanent Post Office service will resume in Stradbroke.

As the Diss Express report the former sub-postmaster David Johnson has been trying to sell the post office for some time but without success. Not that long ago the post office shop area was halved in size prompting suggestions that they might want to sell it as a residential property.

It remains to be seen how long Stradbroke will be without a post office, ironically the nearest post office is in the tiny village of Horham leaving much larger Stradbroke with its two schools, doctors surgery and swimming pool without. Perhaps a solution is for it to move into the “top shop” (Spar) which has been mooted in the past.