WEST DEVON residents campaigning to create a pioneering underground post office and shop are this week keeping their fingers crossed their exciting scheme will catch the imagination of major funding bodies.

Exbourne and Jacobstowe Community Post Office, Shop and Café Project currently runs twice a week in the village hall ? but the £250,000 scheme to build a new facility under a field in the village was being promoted to funders at a brokering table in Hatherleigh yesterday (Wednesday).

Sally Hordern, committee secretary, said the services provided by the project had been given a warm reception in Exbourne.

?The coffee shop has taken off with a bang,? she said. ?The whole enterprise is proving extremely popular.

?We can only sell a certain amount of produce because we have no storage space but we have quite good turnover and the coffee shop really has become a village meeting place ? it?s definitely proved there is a need for something like this in Exbourne.?

Mrs Hordern said the project committee had formed an ?industrial provident society? which meant shares were available to buy in the project.

Funding applications have been submitted to the Market and Coastal Towns Initiative which is hosting the brokering table, while other applications have been made to private bodies, such as the Carnegie Trust.

She said the ultimate aim was to create a daily shop, café and post office facility, and provide a flexible building which could be used for other purposes.

?We are aiming to do 8am until 8pm, so you catch people going into work and students waiting for the bus to college and working people coming home in the evening.

?The other thing we will push is local produce,? she said. ?We?re so lucky, we have a dairy down the road, we have local meat and other producers and we would have the requisite amount of space.

?It will be underground, under a pasture field which will continue to be used for grazing. The idea is we are not taking up or destroying use of the land, and, being underground, we will automatically have easy access and it will be much cheaper to run.

?Long-term it should be an extremely viable building,? she said.

Noel Cartwright, of Hatherleigh MCTI, said it was impossible to say how long it would be before any decision was made on funding for schemes being considered by the brokering table.

?I think the process is very much one of seeking partners at this stage, rather than asking people to come along with their cheque books,? he said.

?We are saying this is what the community is aspiring to. We want to put names to projects so we can take them forward.?

Funders invited to the event include the Regional Development Agency and the Government Office South West. They will consider a wide range of projects in addition to the one at Exbourne ? some at an advanced planning stage, some in more aspiration stages.

Among those who recently viewed the model for the facility was West Devon and Torridge Conservative spokesman Geoffrey Cox, who praised it as ?imaginative but practical?.

l Exbourne Post Office and shop closed in December 2001 ? since then, the dedicated committee and small band of volunteers have been working out of the village hall twice a week. Anyone interested in donating a few hours a week to help the project should call Sally Hordern on 01837 851646.