Application to turn Autocheck Chiswick into a Post Office “will take a long time”

Autocheck Chiswick, with queue of people for Frankie’s bakery next door; Photograph Hamish Pringle

Team who run the Heathfield Terrace Post Office apply to change Autocheck Chiswick garage into a new Post Office

The team who run the Post Office on Heathfield Terrace in Chiswick have put in an application to open a Post Office at 1 Chiswick Common Road, currently the site of Autocheck Chiswick.

Owner of Autocheck Les Magiera told The Chiswick Calendar he is thinking about retiring but it will be months before a Post Office is opened there, even if the postmaster gets permission from Hounslow Council for a change of use.

“It’s going to take a long time before it happens”, he told us, “nothing has been agreed or signed and we haven’t discussed the rent, so it’s very speculative. I can’t say whether it will take six months or a year and a half”.

Proposed plan for the new Post Office

The team making the application already run several Post Offices, including the one on Heathfield Terrace. The Post Office wants to sell the building there and when the previous franchisee left and it was closed for four months last year it was feared Chiswick had lost its main Post Office for good.

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In November the Heathfield Rd Post Office advertised for a permanent manager.

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Les, who has run the garage for 40 years and owns the freehold, told us:

“We are the longest standing business here apart from the butcher [Mackens]. Everyone else has changed hands about ten times”‘

His wife Oxana will be staying on Turnham Green Terrace, continuing to run her dress shop and Les wants to reassure his customers the garage will continue doing business for the foreseeable future.

If and when a deal is done with the Post Office franchisees, he will pass the business to another garage in Chiswick.