A PETITION has been launched in a bid to save a sorting office which has been earmarked for closure.

Jill Cowling, 50, of Claremont Road, Wivenhoe, has already collected more than 200 signatures as she tries to keep the town’s sorting office open.

But Mrs Cowling faces an uphill struggle as discussions between the leaseholders, Wivenhoe Town Council, and the tenants, Royal Mail, are at a standstill.

The lease for the sorting office, at 77 High Street, Wivenhoe, ran out in January 2020.

However, the negotiations over the price of renewing the lease have broken down.

With the Royal Mail and Wivenhoe Town Council at loggerheads, Mrs Cowling fears the town will lose a sorting office which has been in Wivenhoe since the early 2000s.

“I’ve started a petition,” Mrs Cowling said. “What it’s asking for, is that Wivenhoe Town Council and the Royal Mail come back to the table and talk again, so we can put to both of them how much we want to keep this service.”

She continued: “The posties are also an asset to our community. During lockdown, we received the post every day.

“If something isn’t quite right with an old person living on their own, then the postman is the first person they see every day.”

However, Wivenhoe mayor Andrea Luxford-Vaughan argued leasing the building out on vastly reduced terms was uneconomic for the town council. She said: “It just seemed completely illogical for us to have a tenant not paying the market value, especially given they’re a multinational organisation.

“The Royal Mail wanted the same lease and they said they would only sign a new one if all the terms were in their favour, and not ours. That’s not a negotiation.”

She added: “All I can confirm is that Royal Mail’s last offer to us was was less than half of what it’s actually worth.”

The situation is complicated by the fact that the property which houses the sorting office was purchased from Colchester Council in 2016, meaning Wivenhoe Town Council was not responsible for the initial terms of the lease.

“We need to ask ourselves ‘Is this in the best interests of our rate payers? Because we’re not getting the best value,” Mrs Luxford-Vaughan said.

The sorting office will continue to operate into 2022 after the Royal Mail secured additional time from the council.

A statement from the Royal Mail said: “Royal Mail has sought to renew its lease with Wivenhoe Town Council to continue running its delivery office at 77 High Street, Wivenhoe.

“The council has not been willing to renew this lease so we are now considering our options in terms of seeking to relocate the delivery office.

“We have secured additional time from the council to operate at the site until early next year.”