A 12-month trial designed to test the feasibility of the "virtual post office" and involving the cream of information technology companies will close next month after attracting only 11 electronic transactions.

The British Post Office had hoped the trial would prove that conventional branches could be replaced by electronic kiosks in council offices and libraries for many of the services required by small businesses. It hailed the trial as a "great success" this week, saying it had been designed as a "low-volume, low-risk" experiment.

Computer Weekly, the information technology newspaper, claimed this week that during the trial the printer at one site jammed after customers mistook the print-out slot for a letter box. And at Norwich's Inland Revenue Enquiry Centre, it said children had to be stopped from surfing the Internet on one interactive machine.

The post office said it had not been aware of the incidents and believed there had been no security problems during the trial. It said all the participants had learnt a great deal about the operation of public online systems. While transaction volumes had been low, sites with information kiosks had generated 10,000 enquiries in the nine months to the end of March, it claimed.

The £1.5 million sterling (€2.18 million) trial, named "Open for Business", was launched with a fanfare last year. It was planned as part of a British government initiative that would enable citizens to transact 25 per cent of their government business electronically by 2002.

It was established by a consortium led by the British Post Office and including Hewlett-Packard, Compaq, IBM, BT, Oracle, Bull, Microsoft, EDS and Entrust. There are no plans to move from prototype to full installation.