Maria Gay of Havant Road, Hayling Island, along with other residents and cllr. Paul Gray have been campaigning for a new post box to be installed after the old one at Stoke Post Office was closed down. The Royal Mail refused a number of times but after campaigning for less than a year the community has won.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 Hello, I'm Maria Gay, an elderly lady.
00:02 And I'm Paul Gray, local councillor and the person that Maria got in contact with when
00:08 she felt she was getting nowhere with the Royal Mail.
00:11 So Maria, tell me how you felt when you realised the postbox had been closed.
00:16 I was absolutely devastated. I'd left it a bit late to post my nephew's, great-nephew's
00:22 card, went over to post it and found it sealed up. So I did miss his birthday. But I phoned
00:32 Royal Mailer. They didn't know why it was sealed up. And they said they'd look into
00:37 it. And two or three weeks later, I had a letter from them saying that it had been sealed
00:46 up due to the occupants of the post office having sold it and the new people had requested
00:55 it be removed, the postbox be removed.
00:59 So how did this make you feel?
01:02 Well, being as I was friends with the people from the post office, I knew that wasn't true.
01:10 So I wrote to them telling them that that was not the truth, that the post office had
01:18 not been sold, that the people were still living there and that also that they hadn't
01:23 asked for it to be removed.
01:28 Some weeks later, I got a reply from them still stating the same case and also that
01:38 it was too dangerous for their employees to stop on a busy road to collect the post so
01:46 it would have been closed anyway.
01:49 So tell me how many letters and interaction with Royal Mailer you've had over this issue?
01:56 And what's the reason why they wanted to close the postbox down? Have they given you anything?
02:01 Well, because the postbox is on private land, so do understand that.
02:08 But being as I pointed out pretty early, that over the road there was an ideal site where
02:15 there'd been a telephone box and that would make an ideal site for a new postbox, particularly
02:22 when they said about the road being dangerous for their employees, making it if it was over
02:30 the road, they wouldn't be in danger because there's a car parked behind and it's not exactly
02:37 a death trap that road.
02:40 But they completely ignored all those things and still, even after we held a meeting, after
02:50 leafleting the local people and it was decided right to Alan Mack and he did write to them,
03:01 they still gave the same excuses to Alan Mack as they were giving to us.
03:07 And then they started saying that it was only half a mile to the postbox.
03:15 I tried to point out that it was more than half a mile according to the, what's it, survey,
03:25 ordinance survey, but they still disagreed.
03:28 But half a mile there and half a mile back and I couldn't walk half a mile in the first
03:38 place.
03:39 And of course it's not easy, there's narrow pavements, they're lopsided and it's a very
03:46 busy road to be walking alongside.
03:48 You know, it's not something you want to be doing to post a birthday card or a letter
03:58 or anything like that.
04:00 So tell me, how do you feel now that you've won this dispute?
04:06 Well, at first I couldn't believe it and then when I did believe it, I absolutely, over
04:14 the moon, I am absolutely thrilled to bits.
04:19 And Paul, would you tell me your sort of take on the whole situation?
04:24 Well, to be honest, Maria and the wider community here in the village in Stoke really have been
04:30 a force of nature themselves.
04:31 They contacted me, but to be honest, as soon as I've given them some ideas, we'd got some
04:35 creative stuff going on, what have you, that they really took charge of themselves.
04:40 It really has been the residents here that have made all this happen.
04:43 I am genuinely just so, so delighted for Maria and everyone here.
04:47 Maria contacted me when she finally got the news, disbelieving that it actually happened,
04:52 asking me to check it and it did say what it said.
04:55 It's been a long battle since last summer, but finally we've actually got the outcome
05:00 that we needed.