War veteran's fury at council's post error

That’s the opinion of Dunkirk veteran Alfred Smith, of Brookfield Road, Bexhill, who found himself on a time-consuming and physically taxing wild goose chase because of a town hall blunder.

He received a card from his postman saying there was a letter for him which could not be delivered because there was no stamp on it, and he would need to go to the sorting office in Devonshire Square to collect it himself.

Reliant on an electric scooter and the occasional use of two walking sticks, Mr Smith struggled in as requested, only to find he was being asked to pay £1.36 for a letter from Rother District Council, ironically bearing a message to the effect: “This letter is important to you.”

Mr Smith, who also fought for five years in Burma and lost his right leg due to thrombosis 10 years ago, said: “There was a whole stack of these letters, all identical, which the counter clerk had to rummage through to find mine.

“It was clear from a notice on the outside about it not being redirected that it had come from Rother, so I refused to pay and instead went to the town hall to complain.”

Rother District Council’s director of resources, Malcolm Johnston, said: “Unfortunately our franking machine developed an error which meant approximately 40 letters went out from the council which were not properly franked.

“We would like to apologise to our residents for this and we are sorry for any inconvenience it has caused them.

“All of the remaining letters should now have been retrieved and we have franked them correctly before returning them to the post office, so people no longer have to pay a charge.”

Mr Johnston added: “If they are not collected in a week, the post office will send them back out to people so they will still receive the letter even if they cannot pick them up. If residents who have already paid for their post contact the council, we will be happy to reimburse them.”

While not divulging the content of the letters, the district council stressed that not all the intended recipients were disabled people.