VITAL mail is not getting through to police, courts, schools and businesses in Brentford due to a shake up in the delivery system.

Royal Mail has reduced deliveries to one a day in the area, a change implemented in January. Since then chaos has ensued as letters, packages and parcels have been delivered late in the day, to wrong addresses and have even vanished into obscurity.

Sue Hoad, Parish administrator for St Paul's Church, called the Times in despair after having to go and collect new Easter posters from their original source, when the ones ordered failed to arrive by post. She said: "I'm aware of numerous businesses not receiving deliveries on time. I had a letter from central London with a first class stamp on it that took nine days to deliver."

The Church has received sackfuls of misdelivered letters, including confidential mail, which Mrs Hoad has redirected by hand: "I am so sick of delivering other people's post. The other week we had seven items for the police section house, which contained private mail for officers.

"I'm an honest person but someone could take advantage of this. They have to do something about it."

The situation is similar at St Paul's CE Primary School, St Paul's Road, where on one day they received a delivery containing post for everyone in the street, except themselves. Alannah Chatir, school administrator, said: "As we are a school we have to make sure we work to certain deadlines and parents need to receive information as quickly as we send it out. If we aren't getting post in then we are letting our parents down."

Mrs Chatir also brought up the financial inconveniences that the delays cause: "It's a worry paying bills and receiving invoices. It's been frustrating."

Worryingly, the delays have also affected the courts in Brentford and two members of staff are now deployed to go and pick the mail up from the Brentford depot on London Road.

A manager said: "We have had difficulties regarding the changes to the extent that we have had to collect our mail ourselves for the last three months.

"We require a specific time delivery which now comes at a cost. It has been a great inconvenience."

However, Royal Mail says it is unaware of any delivery problems.

A spokesman said: "Obviously we do take the security of customers' mail and its delivery very seriously.

"Any problems should be reported via our customer services line on 08457 740 740 so that we can take action immediately to rectify the problem."