The warning came at the meeting of the Marr Area Committee from area manager Leslie Allan, who had produced a report on the latest, proposed, post office closures programme and the consultation process set up to give the public the opportunity to make their views known on the ongoing issue. The consultation process is due to be completed by July 7.

Post Office Limited has earmarked two sub post offices for closure in the Marr Area, at Glassel and Montgarrie.

In addition, the company is proposing that seven other branches in Marr could be included in an "Outreach" programme, that would provide postal services to local communities, at places such as village halls, community centres, or similar locations. The Marr areas that could be included in this service are Finzean, Kennethmont, Lumphanan, Lumsden, Rhynie, Rothiemay, Strachan. But opening hours would be severely reduced at all of them – such as at Lumsden, where they would be slashed from almost 42 hours to just 6 per week.

Mr Allan said that simply protesting the proposed closures or opening hours would not be enough.

Councillors and communities affected would have to gather detailed evidence to support any case. For instance, some proposed opening times might not be suitable for people depending on buses to get to a post office. And, while the Post Office might be persuaded that some opening hours could be changed – such as opening times being in a morning, rather than an afternoon - he did not believe they would agree to change the total number of hours allocated to each facility. But he stressed that Councillors and communities must move fast as the consultation period was due to end on July 7.

The committee agreed that no case could be made for keeping Glassel and Montgarrie facilities open and that they must concentrate their efforts on getting the best conditions they could for the other post offices earmarked to come under the so-called Outreach scheme.

Councillor Bruce Luffman said that he understood Lumphanan was to have a sub postmaster from Laurencekirk, who was expected to do a couple of hours there, before going on to Strachan and Finzean. "What happens if there's a queue of people, when her time at Lumphanan is up. It's a nonsense," he said.

Councillor Alastair Ross said that the whole process was deeply flawed and the Post Office should go back to providing a community service.
Earlier this week, vice chair of the Council's infrastructure services committee, Jill Webster, urged community groups and community councils to submit their comments to Aberdeenshire Council.

"I would like to ensure we mitigate any of the changes as much as possible. Many of the changes have significantly greater implications than may be apparent. For example, in my own Ward, both Strachan and Finzean Post Offices are proposed to go to an Outreach Service with a drastic reduction in hours. Finzean will only have two afternoon sessions of 1.5 hrs. One of these sessions could easily be changed to a morning session allowing access by the warden from the sheltered housing who currently collects pensions but only works in the morning. I have concerns that the postmaster will not be able to deal with all the business which needs to be done in such compacted hours and will the postmaster be able to travel between all the branches served in the very short time available?

" Likewise, the post box isn't big enough for anything other than a small letter and so the community needs a new post box big enough for parcels. Removal of the use of the cash machine will be a huge drawback to the community."

Chairman of Lumphanan Community Council, Frank Couper, told the Piper that around 320 people had signed a petition against the closure of Lumphanan Post Office.

"At the recent Gala Day, 103 people signed the petition, then we had 165 signatures in total in the shop and there were another 52 pensioners at the welfare committee signed as well.

"We'll present that at the meeting on June 30, which has been organised by Sir Robert Smith."