THE POST Office has decided to press ahead with plans to close branches across south Wiltshire despite heartfelt protests from residents.

Laverstock, Victoria Park, Bulford and Lover will lose their post offices while the branches at Tilshead, Wylye, Broad Chalke, Coombe Bissett and Newton Tony will close and be replaced with outreach services.

The news has come as a bitter blow to thousands of people who signed petitions and took part in protests in a bid to prevent the closures.

They say that without local branches, elderly and infirm people will face an inconvienient journey into the city centre.

More than 1000 people signed a petition to save Victoria Park post office and ward councillor Tony Thorpe described the decision to close it as a "terrible shame."

"There are lots of residential homes nearby and people like to be able to walk to the Post Office to conduct their business," he said.

"Now they will no longer be able to do that.

"This is just another example of an important service being lost in our communities.

"I feared that this would happen when we appeared on the closure list. The Post Office tells us there has been a consultation period but it seems they had already made up their minds."

In Broad Chalke residents mounted a letter writing campaign to save their post office and around 300 people took part in a protest march against the closure of the Laverstock branch.

Salisbury MP Robert Key this week slammed the Government for the closures, which he described as "illogical and arbitrary."

"The Post Office has not listened to its customers," he said. "The Post Office was forced into this fiasco by an incompetent and unimaginative Government which has no real understanding of the importance of local post offices to the health and well being of our communities, especially in rural areas."

Many of the villages around Salisbury will now find their post office replaced with outreach services which, in many cases, will see counters relocated and shorter or different opening times.

In Broad Chalke another six week consultation has been launched to decide what shape the outreach service should take.

Last December the Government announced that up 2500 post offices across the country would be shut down in light of £4 million a week losses.

A six week consultation period ended on January 31 and the first closures will take place on April 1.

The Post Office says that 99 per cent of people in Wiltshire will see no change to their service or remain within one mile of an alternative branch.

"These are difficult decisions which we have not taken lightly," said network development manager Tim Nicholls. "We believe that the amended plan offers our customers the best prospect for a sustainable network in the future bearing in mind the Government's minimum access criteria and the other factors the Government has asked us to consider."