DOWNEND’S post office will close in August, it has been confirmed.
Morrisons says it will shut the Morrisons Daily convenience store that hosts the counter service on August 15. The Post Office counter will shut two days earlier, on August 13.
The closure will leave residents without anywhere in the high street to send parcels, collect pensions, apply for passports or vehicle tax, deposit cash and cheques or pay bills, and has led to renewed calls for a ‘banking hub’ to provide in-person cash access.
Morrisons confirmed the closure in July.
It declined to comment on the specific reasons for closing the Downend Road store, how many employees are affected and whether they are being made redundant or offered jobs elsewhere in the company.
A spokesperson referred the Voice to an earlier statement on the future of the shops it bought from the collapsed McColls retail chain in 2022, which said a review had identified 100 stores “whose performance has been challenged for a number of years and which are loss making, despite remedial action”.
Morrisons said “Government policy choices” – thought to relate to increases in the Minimum Wage and employer National Insurance contributions – had made it more difficult to make the stores profitable.
Post Office Ltd says it wants to open a new counter in Downend “as soon as possible”, and other retailers had expressed an interest in hosting one.
In the meantime, it recommends people use the post offices in Staple Hill High Street and Premier 1 in Northcote Road, Mangotsfield.
A Post Office spokesperson said: “Our retail partner has reviewed their Morrisons Daily store operations and has decided to close their store at Downend Road, Downend.
“We fully recognise the inconvenience this will cause our customers and small businesses, who rely on our banking and parcel services in particular.
“The vacancy has been advertised on our runapostoffice.co.uk website.
“We have already received expressions of interest from some retailers and we are now looking more closely at the interest expressed.
“We want to open a replacement branch as soon as possible.”
Frenchay & Downend ward councillors Liz Brennan and Raj Sood have both called for the area to be considered for a ‘banking hub’, which provides face-to-face access for multiple banks.
Cllr Brennan said: “It would help keep our high street thriving by bringing people into the area, and I know so many of us have been affected by the loss of our local banks and now the Post Office too.”
Cllr Sood applied for a banking hub after Downend lost its last ‘big four’ high street bank, HSBC, in 2023.
Cash access service Link, which decides applications, said the presence of a post office in Downend and banks in Kingswood and Fishponds meant new hub was not needed.
But since Link’s assessment last year NatWest has closed its Fishponds Road branch, and Lloyds will follow suit on August 6.