23/01/2024
For those of you that did not see this on the Calverley Community page..
Long post ALERT- Calverley Post Office News 19th of January 2024
Good morning to the good folk of the community here in Calverley. We have a significant announcement. As many of you know the Post Office has been on the market for a number of years with little or no interest. Given what people now know about the Post Office Horizon Scandal it is a wonder that anyone would even buy a post office!
We took over as a family in May 2006. Our youngest, Suleyman- was literally 4 weeks old when we started the business, The whole process was an enormous undertaking and the process took almost 18 months for Waheeda to be approved as a sub postmaster (ironic, given what we had to put up with subsequently) which was an inordinately long period of time with finance having to be rearranged etc.
We extended our Shop/Post Office in 2010 and adopted a long hour’s business model with both the shop and the Post Office. Waheeda could not have done this without our esteemed local beekeeper Peter James Hoskins. Who supported us in this part of our journey. Sadly, neither Royal Mail nor the Post Office supported us in our journey- they could have adopted different pick-up times for the post etc, but they would not do this.
Politically, we are thankful to the Carters - Amanda and Andrew for their support of us as an institution and recently Peter Carlill has been supportive too. Sadly, our local MP has not really supported us at all. For example, I wrote to him on Sunday the 6th of January, and we got an automated acknowledgement from his email. (Perhaps you could write to our local MP and ask him what he has done etc.) However, given the outpouring of support and furore over the Alan Bates et al programme, we would have expected to hear at least something from our local member of parliament- regardless of whether he was standing in the next election or not!
We are incredibly thankful to all our local customers who have supported us through thick and thin. There are significant numbers of you who have supported us through our side ventures like the Friday Curry Nights, The Pop-Up French Bakery, and our Street Food Fridays. (Most of you will be aware that these were necessary for us to simply survive as a business and to remain afloat!) We have been blessed with the custom of lots of local businesses but particularly Zenith. Zenith moved to Kirkstall forge a few years later but were originally based in the mills in Calverley. Zenith are one of the leading car leasing companies in the UK and we completed a considerable number of road taxes for them over the years. In fact, without their business over the years we would not have survived.
To all those regular purchasers of newspapers who know of our battles with Menzies, our wholesaler, thank you for your support. In particular, people like David Alred who wrote to the CEO of Menzies, and they finally got their act together albeit for a fleeting period of time. To all of you who came in on a regular basis we as a family thank you very much for your support.
Coming back to the impact of the Horizon on Waheeda and all of us as a family. All the time- from when we opened (to several years after) we kept getting a series of shortfalls/corrections on balancing day which was a Wednesday evening. The post office contract was such that we had to pay back any shortfalls. Quite often Waheeda would spend several hours on the balancing of the books, repeatedly doing them over and over again, Unfortunately the result was the same ad-infinitum. She dreaded every Wednesday although she hid this from our customers and family! This felt like a version of the ‘mafia’ coming to collect a weekly/fortnightly/ monthly contribution. These shortfalls were often in the hundreds of pounds and occasionally more than that. Waheeda felt that she had little choice but to balance the books.
We as a family sold all our valuables, borrowed money from relatives, took out loans and re-mortgaged etc just to pay off these mysterious shortfalls- all this time was an extremely dark and anxious period for all of us but particularly for Waheeda! In fact, if it was not for my dear departed father-in-law things may have been vastly different. Our very own local legend, Peter James Hoskins was also a huge help. The main reason we just put the cash in to make up the shortfalls was the fear of not only losing the business but the family home etc.
Just as a side note we are part of the GLO and the original 555 claimants as per Alan Bates and the Justice for Sub postmasters Alliance. We hope that justice is served to all of those that have been affected by the scandal!
Anyway, to cut a very long story short we are selling the business and unless the Post Office HQ can find a local establishment that can take over the sub-post office, it will close by the middle of March 2024. We are sorry to have announce this. There will be a general store replacing the post office. However, I will leave it to the new owners to announce what they are going to do etc.
For the time being we will remain in the village. Good tidings to all customers and friends from the Hussains.
(Waheeda, Asaf, Saeed, Kaiss and Suleyman.)
PS do drop by and have a chat!
PPS your nearest post offices will be in Woodhall, in Idle Village and Farsley.
