If you searched for TG Jones this weekend, you were not alone. The name shot to the top of Google’s trending searches in Britain, with more than 200,000 searches in a day, as shoppers and Post Office customers tried to work out whether their local branch is about to disappear. The short answer, for dozens of towns, is yes — and the closures are only part of a much larger retreat from the British high street.
TG Jones is the name now carried by the high-street shops most Britons still know as WHSmith. The chain’s high-street business was sold by WHSmith to the private equity firm Modella Capital in June 2025 and rebranded. The travel shops in airports, railway stations and hospitals were not part of the deal and stayed with WHSmith. What Modella bought was around 450 high-street stores — and it has since decided that as many as 150 of them should close.
Seventy post offices inside the closing stores
The reason the story has cut through is not really about stationery. It is about post offices. When Modella took over, about 180 of its stores contained a Post Office branch, many of them the main branch in their town after earlier Crown post offices had closed. According to Post Office records analysed by The Guardian, 36 of those branches have already shut this year, and a further 34 are due to close by early 2027. That is 70 branches — more than a third of the total.
The closures are not evenly spread, which is why they sting. Stevenage, Bracknell and Orpington are each losing two post offices within months. Hull and York are losing several. Telford is due to lose its last remaining branch when its TG Jones store closes in January. Essex is losing six branches inside TG Jones stores, the West Midlands five and Wales four. For the people who use them, a post office inside a high-street shop is not just somewhere to buy stamps: it handles parcels, bill payments, banking deposits and identity checks such as passport applications. When one closes, the replacement is often further away and offers fewer services.
Harborne closes on Monday; Scarborough in January
The immediate trigger for this weekend’s searches is close at hand. The Post Office branch inside the TG Jones store at 95 High Street, Harborne, in Birmingham, closes on Monday 2 November, because the store itself is closing. The local councillor has stressed that the decision came from TG Jones, not from the Post Office, which says it is talking to potential new franchisees. The nearest alternative, in Northfield Road about a mile and a half away, does not offer passport check-and-send services.
Scarborough’s main Post Office, inside the TG Jones store at 106–107 Westborough, is expected to shut shortly before the store itself closes on Saturday 23 January 2027, after a closing-down sale. The Post Office has pointed customers to branches at Falsgrave Road, about 0.7 miles away, and Newlands Park, about 1.4 miles away, while it looks for a permanent replacement.
Why Modella says the stores must close
Modella’s restructuring plan won creditor approval in July, and the company says closures are needed “to secure the long-term future” of the chain. Of the 110 store closures announced so far, around 70 contain or contained post offices. The pace is quickening rather than slowing: the chain closed 19 stores in September and announced 22 more for October, with at least four more in November, at least two in December and at least 27 from January to March 2027, according to a tracker maintained by the comics news site DownTheTubes.
That timetable is what makes the story bigger than one weekend’s searches. So far, only Stirling has reopened under a new operator after a TG Jones closure, with a permanent replacement for Ipswich due in November and temporary branches planned for Maidenhead and Uxbridge.
What this means for the high street
The TG Jones retrenchment lands in a difficult moment for Britain’s high streets and for household budgets. Healey’s first Budget put new charges on banks while offering households a £100 payment, and the global growth forecast has improved only slightly, with the IMF warning that the cushion is thinning.
For shoppers, the practical question is simpler: check before you travel. Post Office branches inside TG Jones stores are closing on different dates, and the Post Office’s own branch finder is the reliable check for the nearest alternative and its services. If your branch is one of the 34 still to close by early 2027, its last day will be announced locally first — and, as Harborne shows, it may arrive with very little notice.
