A NATIONAL campaign aimed at saving sub post offices - dubbed community lifelines - has been launched in the village of Allbrook.

Eastleigh MP David Chidgey chose his own constituency to kick-start a series of nationwide petitions calling for government action to stop sub post offices closing at the rate of 200 a year.

The Liberal Democrats' campaign calls for every sub post office to be automated before they lose "vital" income from dispensing benefit and pension payments.

They are also demanding the government scrap plans which, they claim, would lead to the sell-off of a privatised Post Office plc.

"If the local post office closes the local shops follow very shortly - it is an essential public service and should remain in public ownership," said Mr Chidgey, who is the LibDem's trade and industry spokesman.

Mr Chidgey said he had chosen the sub post office in Pitmore Road as a venue for the campaign launch because when he was campaigning in the 1994 by-election local customers had been opposed to Tory plans to privatise the Post Office.

He said unless all sub post offices were fully computerised they would be unable to compete with other financial institutions when the contract from the Benefit Agency came up for renewal in 2003.

New proprietors of the Pitmore Post Office, Craig and Darrell Gibson, stressed the business they took over a month ago was not struggling and would be computerised shortly.

Mrs Gibson said: "We need the post office to sustain the shop. The two go hand-in-hand. It is the lifeline of the community, there is quite a mixed age group of people here and it is the meeting place a lot of the time.

"They come here for all sorts of things whether it be advice, their shopping or their pensions. "We want to be part of the community, that is why we bought the business."

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