Post Office, photo grassrootsgroundswell (Creative Commons)

Post Office, photo grassrootsgroundswell (Creative Commons)   (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

Matt Hirst, Huddersfield Socialist Party

Huddersfield residents were shocked when news was leaked that the 103-year-old building on Northumberland Street that housed one of two town centre Post Offices is earmarked to be sold off.

The post office will be merged with the other post office building, already up for sale, and the new one will to be located on a new site, run by a private franchise.

Readers of the Socialist in Wakefield and Halifax will immediately be thinking of WHSmith. Recently, both Wakefield and Halifax, in close proximity to Huddersfield, lost their post office buildings, and have to go to small booths inside WHSmith to get their postal service.

But with large high street retailers failing left, right and centre, no retailer is guaranteed to stay afloat, never mind remain open. So if WHSmith goes the way of Woolworths, Toys R Us and Maplin to name a few, what will happen to the post office located within?

The post office is not part of Royal Mail. It is still owned and run by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. Through our stalls and leafleting we will campaign to keep our post offices open!