Post Office project at North Bank - 1960

Work began this week at North Bank, Bideford, on two Post Office projects, but it will be five years before workmen finally leave the site. Here are to be built the vehicle servicing department - to displace that at the rear of the former Post Office building in High Street - and the automatic telephone exchange. But whereas it is anticipated that the new workshops will be in operation by about September of next year, it will be 1965 before local telephone subscribers are able to dial the numbers they require.

A Post Office spokesman told the Gazette that because of the restriction on capital expenditure the various building projects throughout the country have to be graded in order of priority and that Bideford is not considered one of the most urgent. It was for that reason the scheme would take some time to complete. But as far as the telephone exchange is concerned a tremendous amount of work has to be done. Completion of the actual building - in 1962-63 - will comprise a comparatively small part of the scheme. Installation of the equipment, and feeding in of cables carrying the lines of more than 3,000 subscribers in the Bideford and Northam areas who will be served by the new exchange, is a big undertaking. Then every subscriber will have to be supplied with a new instrument.

Not all the North Bank land purchased for the development will be needed. The customary practice in such cases was being followed, said the spokesman. The surplus land had been offered to Bideford Town Council, but they had decided that they did not want it. The next step would be to ascertain if any other Government department needed it. Assuming that none did, the land would be put on the market.