On 13 September 2008, Station Way Post Office in Buckhurst Hill, near Epping, reopened for business and in doing so became the first branch in Britain previously earmarked for closure to be saved. Station Way was able to do this thanks to the Essex County Council post office initiative. Essex County Council believes that post offices are a crucial community facility and is proud to be delivering to its residents, particularly to many of the most vulnerable, something that is so important to them.
Since September 2008, more sites have reopened in Little Hallingbury and Henham in the north west of the county, Panfield Lane in Braintree and another at Castle Hedingham. November 2009 will see another three post offices open at White Notley, Allnutts Road in Epping and Berechurch Road in Colchester.
Essex County Council are in the process of facilitating the reinstatement of another two sites both of which should be open by early 2010, bringing the total number of post offices being supported by Essex County Council to ten. Details of these post offices will be announced once a reopening date has been confirmed.
Once all ten Post Offices are reopened the effort and purpose of the project will be repositioned towards securing the future of not only the post offices that are supported by Essex County Council but also the wider post office network across Essex which incorporates 268 post offices.
This repositioning will aim to make the Essex post office network more sustainable and attempt to insulate it from any further closure programmes. This second phase aims to achieve this by developing solutions that increase the level of footfall into the post office network, the number of transactions conducted over the counter and to also maximise people's awareness of what you can actually do in a post office.
These specific solutions that will make this objective a reality are currently being scoped and more details will be available about the in due course
