THE Winchester city centre Post Office has continued to face criticism for long queues and wait times.

As previously reported, the Post Office, located in WHSmith on Winchester High Street, was left as the sole post office in the city centre following the closure of the Upper High Street Post Office in November 2021.

Customers have recently criticised the Post Office for its long wait times, with some people having to wait for more than half an hour to be served.

Criticism has also been levelled at its new opening hours, brought in earlier this year, which sees it closing early on Saturdays and not opening on Sundays.

READ MORE: City centre gains its own dedicated policing team

There have also been delays in being served due to high demand and low staffing numbers. 

On Thursday, March 23, customers faced extra delays, with the queue stretching out of the Post Office and into WHSmith itself.

The current issues had been compounded by the three self-serve tills being out of action due to an upgrade. 

An engineer was working on the self-service checkouts, which were out of service, however there was only one member of staff serving customers at the till.

The engineer said the tills would be offline for at least the day. 

One customer, who did not want to wait, spoke of their frustrations to the Chronicle. 

They said: "It is simply unacceptable for a vital service like this to be left so under-resourced. The remaining staff are clearly working hard, and having to put up with many people's frustrations, but there's simply not enough of them - and to have the self-serve tills out of action is a joke. 

"It is taking the mickey out of their staff, and out of their customers. And don't even get me started on their opening hours. It is quite frankly ridiculous that a major Post Office in the centre of a city is not open for the same hours as other shops, such as the very shop it is situated in." 

A Post Office spokesperson told the Chronicle that staffing issues were to blame.

They said: “We’re sorry to hear about the recent experiences of customers using our Winchester branch. We know how much local residents and businesses rely on the branch, particularly for mail and everyday banking services.

“There have been short-term staffing issues and we want to apologise to our customers for this. A recruitment process is underway and new staff members will shortly be in place to support customers.”