RURAL businesses and residents in Chilbolton have received no post this week after their regular postie went off sick.

The Royal Mail has apologised for the breakdown in delivery - and promised it will be back to normal next week.

One company, which did not want to be named, said it had to carry out its own inquiries to find out why it was not getting any post.

A spokeswoman said: "We eventually found out that our regular postman was off and so is his relief."

The company discovered its post was accumulating at the mini-sorting office just a few miles away in Stockbridge.

So the post - most of which contained cheques for the business - was collected in person.

"I feel sorry for the local people," she said. "The problems are caused by the people at the top."

What particularly annoy-ed her was that no one from Royal Mail made contact to warn them of the problem.

This week a spokesman for Royal Mail confirmed it had a problem because the regular postman went on sick leave at short notice. The difficulties were exacerbated because other members of staff who would have been able to take over the round were away from the office.

He said: "This is a deep rural area and, unlike urban areas where all the streets are named and houses have numbers, houses tend not to be numbered - they often have names instead and the streets are often not named."

In such circumstances it was difficult for someone unfamiliar with the round to stand in, he said.

By Wednesday the Royal Mail was planning to send someone in to cover and it was promised the problem would be resolved by Monday.

"We apologise to customer but it is only temporary and the service should be back to normal next week," said the spokesman. He added the Royal Mail would investigate the possibility of warning people in advance if there was a similar disruption in the future.