CONTROVERSIAL plans to axe thousands of village post offices have been questioned by the Prime Minister's own chief adviser on rural communities.

Rural Advocate Dr Stuart Burgess has warned Gordon Brown of the major worry being felt in the countryside about the post office closure threat.

In the South Lakes, up to a dozen sub-post offices - around 25 per cent of the total - are expected to close as part of the Network Change programme.

Highlighting the issue in his annual report to the PM this week, Dr Burgess said: "The importance that rural communities attach to post offices as a vital local service is clear.

"The village shop, the post office and the doctor's surgery provide somewhere to meet other people; without these (it is) so much easier for some to become increasingly isolated and excluded from their community.

"What rural communities, along with postmasters and postmistresses, desperately wanted, was clarity about the long-term vision for the post office network, with its 8,000 rural post offices, so that they could then explore creative local solutions for providing a post office service with some certainty."

Dr Burgess's report was published as concerns continued to be raised over the way Post Office Ltd's consultation exercise - due to begin in Cumbria on March 18 - is being carried out.

Now one of Eden District Council's joint leaders, Malcolm Smith, has described the consultation as "a mockery" after he revealed Post Office Ltd managers approached him in his capacity of chairman of Brough Memorial Hall committee to discuss renting part of the building for a part-time Outreach post office before a decision to close the village's full-time post office had even been made.

A Post Office Ltd spokesman insisted the post offices earmarked for closure would not be known until March 18 and then would be the subject of a consultation process.