A PIONEERING merger between a village post office and pub could be repeated across the UK after being hailed a success in Parliament.

Ribble Valley MP Nigel Evans said the Government needed to find more innovative ways to ensure that post offices remained open in rural communities.

Hurst Green in the Ribble Valley faced losing its post office last year when the community's general store changed hands until the landlord at the Eagle and Child pub stepped in.

Now the post office is open several days a week.

Speaking in Parliament, Mr Evans said Royal Mail needed to be "imaginative about its network particularly in rural areas."

He said: "Rural post offices may have been closed, but is it not time the post office started actively to consider how many pubs in rural areas could double up as post offices?

"Some already do, including the Eagle and Child in Hurst Green. The post office there was closed but it has been reinvented in the pub.

"That is the sort of reinvention that we want to see. We want openings in rural areas not closures."

Mr Evans, in a special debate in Westminster Hall, the House of Commons second debating chamber, dismissed suggestions that American-style mobile post offices were the answer.

He said: "Going to the post office may be the only time when some people get out of the house. Mixing with other people in the post office is important.

"The postmaster or postmistress knows if people have not been in.

"In my village, Pendleton, the postmistress once told me: I have to nip out, Mrs Jones hasn't come in for her pension and I want to see if she is okay.' "That is exactly what she did and what a fantastic social service it is."

In reply, Trade Minister Barry Gardiner said the Government was providing cash to save sub-post offices but parts of the network were no longer financially sustainable. He agreed that the Government and the Post Office needed to look at the sort of innovative solutions Mr Evans was proposing.

In other parts of the Ribble Valley, post offices have re-opened in shops and churches.

And the post office in Bolton-by-Bowland diversified to become a tea-room to help it remain open.