The manager of a village shop says she’s “gutted” after Evri unexpectedly pulled its services from the store.

Sevie Ashby, who runs Cobham Community Stores in Cobham, near Gravesend, says she didn’t find out the shop had been decommissioned until customers told her last month.

Last April, Evri began monitoring the shop after the number of parcels they were taking in reportedly started to decrease.

Sevie said: “Over the past year we’ve been fighting and fighting, but have had absolutely no news from them at all.

“We started being told by customers coming in that we were not online anymore so I ended up ringing head office.

“They said they didn’t have any information but their computer said we had been decommissioned on April 30.”

Despite trying to contact her local representative, Sevie says she did not hear anything from Evri until they came to take the equipment from the store a few weeks ago.

She explained: “They said our average was 191 parcels a week and they wanted 200.

“So I just said ‘I’m not fighting this anymore’. We’ve offered the best customer service we could, we have done everything we could to try and keep the service.

“All the independent shops are being phased out to favour big corporate contracts with Tesco and the Post Office.

“We’re tiny and we can’t compete. I’ve had to turn people away this week. It’s just really horrible.”

She says Evri pulling its services will have a “huge impact” on the store, explaining: “The shop is really going to suffer from it, because people come in to drop off their parcels and then they buy a few other bits as well.

“We really are a small community shop so it’s not even for personal profit, it’s a service to the community.

“We’ve got people in the village who don’t drive and elderly people.

“So the fact that we could print labels in store made it really easy for them. They didn’t have to deal with any computers or anything like that.

“It is a big service to the community that has been taken away. I do understand they want money and numbers, but we’re not about that here.”

The store, in The Street, is the only one in the village and is almost entirely volunteer-run.

It has been an Evri agent since 2014 and made between £2,000 and £3,000 per year from running the service in the shop.

Sevie said that while that figure may be a “drop in the ocean” for bigger retailers, it was a “big deal” for the community shop.

She understands that the German company is favouring basing itself in Tesco Express stores instead of independent retailers – the closest for Cobham customers would be 2.4 miles away in Meopham.

She’s now contacted a number of parcel providers including DHL, DPD and InPost to offer services at Cobham Community Stores so villagers still have somewhere to go.

“It just isolates people. We don’t have a post office anymore.

“I want to try and turn this situation into something positive for people who will appreciate the efforts we go to to try and help people here.

“The shop as a whole is a bit of a social hub. Socially, it feels like we’re a bit cut off now.

“We’re always on the cusp here, we’ve got rent and all sorts and we’re never swimming in gold.

“It feels like this is a bit of a blow to us now. It’s a community shop and we try to keep our prices down as much as possible.

“Losing an income like that is going to make a big difference so fingers crossed we can get someone else in.

“We’re a bit gutted at the lack of communication from Evri and to find out from customers is a bit naff.

“We are going to bounce back and we’ll find someone else and life will carry on.”

Evri says having its service at Cobham Community Stores was “unviable” after parcel numbers reportedly fell by 40% in recent months.

A spokesperson said: “We appreciate what a difficult time it has been for Cobham Community stores overall and in terms of our partnership with them we have worked closely with the store for more than a year to try and increase the number of consumers within the community using our service.

“Our decision to no longer offer services in this store isn’t one that we have taken lightly and we are constantly reviewing our locations and are committed to keeping those that are most used within communities.”