LOCAL NEWS

The following note (from the NextDoor website) provides background and up to date news on the likely closure of Uppingham Post Office:

“Presentation to Uppingham Neighbourhood Forum 27 Nov 2025 by Geoff Thompson
(modified to include answers to questions raised by the attendees)
Most of you will know that there have been various messages circulating about the future of the Post Office.  You’ve seen petitions to sign, signs in the Post Office itself, articles in the local papers and a For Sale sign outside the building – I’m sure that what you really want to know is whether the Post Office is definitely closing or whether it is definitely staying open.
So I will try to set out the situation as clearly as I can.  
Firstly the For Sale sign on the building. This relates to the sale of the freehold of the property, currently owned by the landlords. It does not relate to the Post Office business. The Post Office business operates under a rental agreement – for a number of years at an agreed rental charge per annum. The property is registered as a Community Asset and the sale has not yet been notified to the county council according to their website.

Robin, the Post Master, and his staff team have been providing us with an excellent Post Office service for well over a decade now. A few years ago Robin decided to retire and sought a buyer for the Post Office business. He had hoped this would be concluded by now but as you can imagine, since the Horizon scandal, there is much less interest in people running a Post Office. The bottom line is that a buyer has not been found.

Various people in the town have tried to find other solutions – could another location be found? Could it be located within another store? You still need someone to buy the business and employ the staff. No solutions were found.

A small group got together to advertise in the local papers and asked for people to come forward if they would be willing to help save the Post Office. As a result, a series of meetings were held to decide how the community could save the Post Office. Following a model that has been successful elsewhere and thanks to Robin doing some research on the subject, we agreed to form a Community Benefit Society that could have a management committee run by the community, could employ a Post Master and staff and could raise money.

This process took six weeks and the new company was formed on 12 November, just two weeks ago. It is called Uppingham Market Place Community Shop Limited and now has the task of agreeing the terms of the transfer of the Post Office business with Robin.
There are many legal, financial, property and staff matters to resolve formally before we can reach a conclusion but there is now hope.

The current rental agreement ends on 31 December 2025 but Robin intends to extend this for a further six months to buy time to find a solution.

There are three ways in which you can help:

NUMBER 1 – for us to be a member of a Community organisation, the organisation want to see that we have engaged with our community.  This is you. So can I start by asking with a show of hands if you want the post office to remain open. Does anyone think it should close? Why?
All 68 attendees by show of hands indicated that they wanted the Post Office to remain open. By separate show of hands nobody wanted it to close.

NUMBER 2 – if this is to be successful we need you to use the Post Office, see what they sell, buy things, as much as you can, and encourage other people to do so too.

NUMBER 3 – you can become a member of Uppingham Market Place Community Shop Limited and buy community shares.  They are £1 each and there is a minimum of 100 shares ie £100 and no maximum. If we are not successful that money may be lost. If we are successful enough then you may be able to withdraw the money after three years – but there are no guarantees. There is also no interest or dividends paid.  So your money would be of great help but you should think of it as a donation.  There are application forms at the back and I have a copy of the rules if anyone want to inspect them. They are also available online. We don’t yet have a bank account but expect to open one as soon as possible.
A few local families have pledged funds to lend to the Society to provide working capital and financial stability until such time as the Society can build its own resources but everyone’s support will be helpful so the more people become members the more capital we will have.

We will put some content online at some point to keep people up to date.

The company’s aim is to buy and run the Post Office business. Profits cannot be taken out, they will be reinvested into the Post Office or into other community activities. But for now the aim is to rescue the Post Office and the existing staff intend to continue working there.

It is taking a lot longer to get this concluded than any of us hoped and there a number of legal and financial steps we need to go through to make this happen but we are determined to find a way to make this work if at all possible.
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Members of the management committee are:
Philip Warner (Chair), Philippa Wills (Vice-Chair), Geoff Thompson (Treasurer and Secretary); Peter Rees; Andrew Robinson; Ron Simpson.
We do have sufficient members of the management committee to make a start but we may need specific skills to help in the future and will let all the members know what we need when that time comes.
Additional information: Over 1000 local people have signed a petition in support of the Post Office remaining open.

Contact/Get Involved: Interested parties can contact Uppingham First at secretary@uppinghamfirst.co.uk or the dedicated email saveuppinghampostoffice@gmail.com.