ROYAL Mail has hit back at claims that the postal service in Waltham Forest is failing.

It responded after a meeting between post watchdog Postwatch and Councillor Stella Creasy resulted in a visit to the Leyton area delivery office to investigate complaints received by councillors.

Melanie Corfield, head of external relations, said: "Royal Mail's postmen and women in Leyton have worked tirelessly to improve the service in the area and the latest local results reflect this.

"These are independently monitored and show that our service in E10 is now above the national target for first class mail arriving the next day."

The most recent figures released by the Royal Mail show post punctuality in the East London area, which includes Waltham Forest, dropped from 87.5 per cent in 2003/4 to 86.5 per cent in 2004/5.

However, in the last quarter of the year the figures moved closer to the national target of 92.5 per cent.

But Mrs Corfield said that the latest unpublished monthly figures showed post punctuality was now above the national target.

At the meeting between Cllr Creasy and Postwatch's London chairwoman, Kay Dixon, Mrs Dixon said that she thought many of the problems with lost or wrongly delivered post stemmed from agency staff getting lost with people's mail.

Mrs Corfield was keen to reassure Leyton customers that this was not the case.

She said: "There are no agency casual staff being used and Royal Mail's aim is to have a full workforce of permanent, well-trained people. There are also no vacancies and we have fully-trained people as reserves to cover any absences.

"These are now the facts after months of hard work since last spring when Royal Mail was introducing the biggest changes in its history to modernise the business."

She added: "We welcome a visit by Postwatch and Cllr Stella Creasy to show them at first hand what our local postmen and women are achieving."