THE POST Office has been told its closure plans for Oxford are based on deeply-flawed information.

Proposals to shut sub-post offices at Grandpont, Iffley and Wolvercote are being challenged by Oxford City Council, which has submitted a scathing assessment of the closure programme.

It says the closures are "poorly justified" with the Post Office putting forward wrong or outdated information.

And rather than shutting post offices, the city council tells the Post Office it should respond to the clamour in North Oxford to reinstate the post office in Summertown.

Oxfordshire County Council said it was now investigating whether it might follow the example of Essex, where council property such as libraries and schools are to be offered to save post offices for local communities.

With more than 22 of the county's post offices under threat, more than 10,000 Oxfordshire people have signed a petition demanding their reprieve. It will be handed into 10 Downing Street and Post Office Ltd's headquarters on Monday as the month-long consultation on the proposals comes to an end.

The leader of Oxford City Council, John Goddard, led a council delegation which met with Post Office representatives this week.

He warned that thousands of people in Oxford were being condemned to travelling to the main Oxford Post Office in St Aldate's.

"The queues there are horrendous," he said. "It is like going back in time to Eastern Europe 20 years ago. We explained to them that the proposed closures are a totally bad idea."

The city council's formal response is set out in a letter from its chief executive, Peter Sloman, which urges the Post Office to reconsider its plans.

It says the failure to replace the Summertown post office in a shopping centre serving 20,000 is "frankly absurd".

He says wrong information is presented about Grandpont, with the number of elderly people living in the catchment area seriously underestimated.

"These people in particular will miss access to the local post office," Mr Sloman warns.

The number of people using the Iffley post office is said to be significantly underestimated, because Post Office figures fail to take into account the increased usage that resulted from the earlier closure of the Rose Hill post office.

At Wolvercote, the Post Office is said to have even got the geography wrong.

The chief executive says: "The Godstow Road post office is a genuine village facility serving Lower Wolvercote and complements other community facilities nearby, including shops, pubs and a doctors' surgery. Its closure would mean local people needing to access alternatives that are physically challenging."

County Hall said it had already made contact with Essex County Council, which is planning to take over post offices earmarked for closure. Essex County Council will initially spend up to £18,000 a year subsidising each branch, relocating them to public buildings such as schools and libraries.

Keith Mitchell, leader of Oxfordshire County Council, said: "We are interested in looking at what Essex is doing and seeing what we could learn. However, I would have thought it highly unlikely that we will go down the same path to any large degree."