THE Post Office has claimed that the closure of one its branches in the city will not affect people living nearby.

The Oaklands branch at 444 Hatfield Road, St Albans, will shut its doors from March next year but the company maintained there would be little disruption to local customers.

A Post Office statement said: "We have a responsibility to ensuring that customers in St Albans will continue to have reasonable access to local Post Office products and servcies.

"Even after changes are made, well over 95 per cent of customers will still live within a mile of a Post Office branch."

Post Office Ltd area head George Hooper said: "Following a preference exercise during which subpostmasters across the country were asked to indicate their wishes for the future, the business has agreed with the subpostmaster of Oaklands Post Office at 444 Hatfield Road, that his branch should close permanently in March.

"Having met with the sub-postmaster from Oaklands Post Office and also with other local postmasters, we have concluded that if the Oaklands Post Office branch were to close, it would improve the long-term prospects of the other branches in the area.

"We have made sure Fleetville Post Office in Hatfield Road, Marshalswick Post Office in the Quadrant and St Peter's Street Post Office branch would be fully geared up to cope with extra customers should the closure go ahead."

People living near to the Oaklands branch can write to the Post Office with their views.

Write to George Hooper at the National ConsulttionTeam, PO Box 641, St Albans, AL1 5XN.

Consignia, which has reverted to the name of Post Office Ltd, announced earlier this year that a radical modernisation programme was needed to turn the company's flagging fortunes around.

It is widely expected that a third of the company's 9,000 urban post offices will close.