27 Aug 2025
Staff at St Peter’s Street Post Office have bid a sad farewell to their customers as the business transforms into a franchise.
A notice displayed in the branch, which was one of the few surviving Crown Post Offices in the UK, thanked them for their loyal custom over the years.
“It has been a pleasure to serve this community and with 190 years’ worth of service between us, we’ve obviously enjoyed our time working for the Post Office,” it added.
The branch closed its doors yesterday at 3pm, and will reopen later today at 1pm, but will then be operated by independent franchise retail partner Universal Office Equipment Ltd, which runs eight other PO branches, a banking hub and stationery stores across London, Herts and Surrey.
The Post Office promises that the same range of services will be available at this time, and any future changes to service provision will be handled in line with their Principles of Community Engagement, which will involve notifying local elected representatives and displaying a poster in the branch with four weeks’ notice of any changes.
St Albans MP Daisy Cooper, who has fought a campaign to prevent the transformation of the venture into a franchise, said nothing was certain about its future.
“After a 24 hour closure, the St Peter’s Street Post Office will re-open as a franchise and under new management. As there’s still no long-term plan for the branch, the threat of closure will continue to hang over it like a Sword of Damocles.
“Ministers and Post Office bosses claim they want to create a long-term, sustainable future for the Post Office as a whole, but without guaranteeing that the St Peter’s Street branch will remain in the same location, provide the same or better opening hours or provide the same services, this claim is at risk of sounding pretty hollow.
“Now that the ownership has irreversibly changed hands, I’ll be meeting the Post Office bosses and the new franchisee soon, to grill them on their plans.”
