With Lower Tilehurst and Wantage Road post offices now believed to be under threat of closure in Reading West constituency Alok Sharma, the Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for Reading West, relaunched the petition started earlier in the year to save local post offices, together with local residents outside Lower Tilehurst post office.

Alok said: "During the summer we organised and delivered to 10 Downing Street a local petition signed by hundreds of people across Tilehurst, Southcote and Purley calling on the Labour Government to reconsider its plans to close local post offices which play a vital role in the community and are an essential lifeline for many people, especially the elderly. I am pleased that our petition has had some influence on limiting the number of locally planned closures however we are now redoubling our efforts to save those local post offices still under threat by continuing our petition and we will be working hard to ensure that the Labour Government is not allowed to ride roughshod over the views of local Reading residents."