Post offices close

THE POST office at Levenwick in the south mainland closed for the last time on Tuesday.

The post office, which is housed within Midway Stores, was earmarked for closure earlier in the year. A public consultation period, in which a vigorous local campaign to retain the post office was launched, failed to save it.

There has been a post office at Levenwick for more than 100 years, and it has been run by the Irvine family since September 1963, when it was taken over by the father of current owners James and Ian (John) Irvine.

The closure was a sad day for the brothers, who had to work “late into the night” with post office representatives to finalise matters. John Irvine said: “Everything had to be sorted out. They are coming to take the computer away next week. I don’t know what to say about it. We are going to lose wages and are going to have to depend on the shop for our livelihood. I hope it won’t affect the shop surviving.

“The locals are furious. We had a campaign going, more than 200 people signed a petition but it made no difference. Seeing the people coming in for their pension was cheery. We’ll miss things like that. People here are up in arms about it.”

The post office still has a sorting office which will stay in place for another few weeks until it is relocated to Virkie. There are still two postmen working from the sorting office.

Levenwick Post Office was one of only two in Shetland (the other was Camb in Yell) which faced the axe in the government’s Network Change programme.