ELDERLY residents of two villages are going without their pension payments after a Post Office outreach service was closed without warning.

A long-running dispute between a subpostmaster and the Post Office was sparked after the villages of Swainby and Osmotherley lost their permanent post offices in June last year.

They were supplied two half-days and three half-days a week, respectively, by the outreach service, which was run from the village halls.

Locals say the services in the villages were well-used and relied on by elderly residents, many of whom have their pensions made out in the name of either post office, and which cannot be cashed anywhere else.

Some pensioners have now gone three weeks without receiving any money and many more are struggling to make the ten-mile round trip to Stokesley, the nearest branch, by bus.

The dispute centred on the refusal of subpostmaster Bob Chaytor, who runs Romanby Post Office, to sign a contract to take over the outreach service put forward by the Post Office.

Mr Chaytor felt the contract unfairly tied him permanently to the outreach services and restricted his ability to run Romanby Post Office properly.

The contract includes a controversial amendment that states a subpostmaster who takes on an outreach service cannot stop servicing it unless he also leaves his core post office.

After eight months of running the outreach services on a caretaker basis, and without signing the contract, Mr Chaytor pulled out of Swainby and Osmotherley when the Post Office failed to find someone to take over by the deadline he had put forward.

Mr Chaytor expressed his regret.“Throughout all this, my main concern has been that the people of Swainby and Osmotherley got the service they deserve and that is why I stuck around for as long as I did,” he said.

“The service simply doesn’t make enough money for me to take the business risk to tie myself to it and risk my core post office suffering too.

“It takes a lot of time and effort to run the outreach services, which is something I don’t have any more.”

Anthea Massingham, a former vice-chairwoman of Swainby Parish Council, said: “A lot of elderly people are in dire straits without a post office,” she said.

“They are having to rely on lifts or other people to collect their money.”

A Post Office Ltd spokesman said: “Swainby and Osmotherley outreach Post Office service has closed temporarily following the resignation of the core sub-postmaster.

“We apologise to our customers for any inconvenience caused and can assure them that we are committed to restoring a service as soon as possible.”