CAMPAIGNS are being launched to save post offices from being closed as part of a national downsizing programme.

The Post Office has revealed that branches at Masefield Close, East Stanley, Hollyhill Gardens, South Stanley, and Durham Road, Blackhill, are among 11 across the county that are facing the axe in November.

The list also includes two in the Durham area, at Marshall Terrace, Gilesgate Moor, and in Front Street, Nevilles Cross.

The Post Office's national 'urban network reinvention' programme, aimed at pruning what it considers to be unviable branches following the introduction of benefit payments to bank accounts, has already led to 53 closures in built-up areas across the North-East.

North Durham Labour MP Kevan Jones, whose constituency includes Stanley, said: "I have already written to the Post Office to say I am opposed to it.

"Certainly the East Stanley one is relied upon by large numbers of elderly people. To expect them to travel into Stanley town centre for basic postal services is unacceptable.

"I would strongly urge residents to write opposing this unjustified closure."

In Durham, Liberal Democrat city councillors are urging customers to back their campaign to save the threatened branches by signing protest petitions.

Council cabinet member Carol Woods, who is also her party's parliamentary candidate for the city, said: "It is an erosion of community facilities."

She said the proposed closures would particularly hit the elderly who would face bus journeys to alternative branches.

Labour Durham county councillor Peter Thompson, who lives in the area, said: "We will be opposing the closure. Post Offices are meeting places and the loss of that social interaction can't be good for a community."

The regional arm of the postal watchdog Postwatch is also urging people to tell it how the proposed closures will affect them.

Consultation on the proposals will end on Monday, September 27. People can contact Postwatch on 08456 013265 or write to Post Office Closures, Freepost, Postwatch.

They can also write to David Mellows-Facer at the Post Office's National Consultation Team, PO Box 2060, Watford, WD18 8ZW.