The future of Teignmouth’s Den Road post office hangs in the balance after bosses confirmed they are planning to offload 115 branches as part of a major overhaul of the business.

‘We are considering a range of options to reduce our central costs. This includes considering the future of our remaining directly managed branches, which are loss-making,’ a Post Office spokesperson said.

The Post Office has a network of around 11,500 branches. However, the majority of these are operated by franchise partners or independent sub-postmasters. Only 1% or around 115 of its post offices are crown post offices that are directly managed by Post Office Ltd. Teignmouth is one of these 115 directly managed branches.

‘We have long held a publicly-stated ambition to move to a fully franchised network and we are in dialogue with the unions about future options for the directly managed branches,’ the Post Office spokesperson added before stating that ‘no announcement has been made about any branch’.

In a speech outlining the Post Office five year transformation plan, chair Nigel Railton explained ‘we need to have an honest conversation about the loss-making parts of our network and our directly managed branches, while still meeting the current requirement for 11,500 branches’.

It is likely that the Post Office will look for a franchise partner to take on the post office business in the centre of Teignmouth.

Teignmouth already has another post office run by sub-postmasters Andrew and Alison Clarke at Ashleigh Way Stores.