A WOMAN was left fuming after she missed a hospital appointment because the letter telling her about it took 16 days to reach her home.

Hannah Lock received the letter from Basingstoke hospital on the afternoon of March 21 - the day of the 9am appointment. The second-class letter was postmarked March 5 and should normally have arrived within two to three days.

Mrs Lock, of St David's Road, South Ham, Basingstoke, had to wait until last week for another consultation and would have waited even longer if she had insisted on seeing the same doctor she was due to see on the 21st.

When Mrs Lock rang the post office to ask for an explanation, she was told her complaint had been logged and that someone would look into her case. But after no-one got in touch, she contacted The Gazette.

"I just can't understand why it took 16 days for the post office to deliver the letter," said Mrs Lock.

"My husband gets lots of letters from the hospital, and we normally get them more or less the next day. I don't know why this letter was different."

Mrs Lock, 47, said she was also annoyed that her post had been delivered so late in the day, but added that was not unusual.

"We do get our post at about 1.30pm or 2pm every day. What on earth is happening with our postal service? We used to have our mail before breakfast, now it's after lunch. What's next, collect it ourselves? Perhaps that would have been best - then I would not have missed my appointment.

"I'm still cross about it now. At the time I was fuming. Why it took all that time to get from there to here I don't know."

Consignia spokesperson Adrian Booth insisted it was "very rare" that a local letter should have taken so long to be delivered, and said he was not sure how the delay could have occurred.

"We are working very hard to eradicate nooks and crannies where the mail can get stuck, and we're very careful to tip bags to make sure there are no letters stuck in the bottom," he said.

"If the address on the letter was all correct, we can see no reason why it should have happened, and we can only apologise to the customer."