Frustrated Royal Mail customers fed up by postal delays have been told their delivery service is the second worst in the country.

Figures released by Postwatch a consumer representatives council have shown that only 86.4 per cent of first class mail is delivered the next day in the south-west London region.

This includes all SW-prefixed postcodes in Merton and Wandsworth.

The London area is a blackspot for postal deliveries, with south-west London in particular falling short of its 92 per cent next day delivery target. Mail bosses now say they are taking urgent action to remedy the crisis.

Yet this has done little to

appease mail recipients,

who say they are sick of

playing a postcode lottery when it comes to their levels of service.

Jerome Hawkins, of Tooting, who relies on the service for business information, said: The service we get is unacceptable. At least every week I miss appointments because the details dont come through the post on time.

If youre doing a job in this area where you need a reliable postal service, you cant do business.

Im now having to rely on email and on couriers which can be really expensive.

A Royal Mail spokesman said: Postwatchs claims are a public misrepresentation of performance.

They know full well that we have to achieve 92.1 per cent by the end of March 2002.

Our second quarter figure for the south-west London area shows an improvement of 9 per cent over the first quarter of the year, and we have plans to improve further. Postwatch focus on first class mail, but 60 per cent of all mail is second class and we exceeded our 98.5 per cent target for that.