From Pillar to Post

12.00.00am BST (GMT +0100) Wed 17th Jul 2002

Hampton residents near the Tangley Park sub post office are being driven to distraction by the inability of the Post Office to clear up a collection box which is so badly defaced by graffiti that it is no longer possible to read the collection times.

Vincent Cable has written to the new managing Director of the Post Office, Jerry Cope, demanding to know why a small but essential task of this kind involved local residents in protracted negotiations with an office in Canterbury: "the Post Office has become a very badly managed operation. Deliveries are erratic. It loses money hand over fist. It can no longer guarantee an early morning post. Now we find that I can't even look after its post boxes".