At Tuesday’s Broadfield Forum one of the invited guests was a chap called Adrian, who works for FTD Johns, the owners of the Broadfield Barton.

He was able to give us the official story of what is going on with the Post Office, which is that it will re-open, but some legal matters are preventing it opening immediately.

An important piece of background information is that the way the Barton is set up is that the leases contain limitations on what type of shop can be in particular units. This is to prevent the parade being overrun with one type of shop and also to protect the business of the shopkeepers, giving them the reassurance that a competing shop will not be opened.

When the Co-op took over Balfour News and intended to turn it into a convenience store, it was this clause which prevented it – and in doing so protected the Premier shop’s interests.

At the moment the old Balfour News premesis has permission to run a newsagents/post office, which prevents one opening elsewhere on the parade – unless the leaseholders voluntarily gave up that right. Right now the leaseholders do not want to give up that right as they obviously feel it adds to the value of their lease – which is for 999 years.

The Premier store has applied for, and got, a licence from Post Office Counters Ltd to operate a sub-Post Office, but they cannot do that as the conditions of their lease prevent them from doing that.

So the situation we are in is that you need two things to be abkle to operate a Post Office: a license and the permission from the management company. One unit of the parade has the licence and another unit has the permission. In order for a Post Office to open either the Balfour News unit has to get a licence or offer to give up their permission and offer it to Premier.

While either of these options is possible, it looks like the leaseholders of the old Balfour News shop are trying to get a licence so they are not likely to give up the permission.

Some of the interested parties will probably give different versions of the story, but this seems to be how it is. The legal restriction which previously prevented Premier from having competition is now preventing them expanding, but having used those restrictions to their advantage so recently they can hardly complain. The only thing we can do is hope that the other people are able to get a licence soon.

In case anyone is wondering how, with all these restrictions, we have ended up with two chemists in a small parade, I am guessing that its because Superdrug is part of the old Sainsbury building which is not part of the Barton management company’s responsibility.

Another little clarification is that all this talk of permissions is nothing to do with planning permission. That is something which is also required, but the class of use permission which both shops currently hold would cover a Post Office, newsagent or convenience store. Planning permission would only come into it if they wanted to chance to a different class like serving hot food or a financial/professional services use for example.