Postal deliveries in Ellesmere are “worse than ever” with claims of late services and misdirected post in the wake of the town’s delivery office closing its doors, a meeting has heard.

Councillor Brian Knight, the mayor of Ellesmere, told a special meeting of the town council last night that he was “very very disappointed” with the service.

Work was transferred to Oswestry in June as part of a Royal Mail move to cut costs. But Royal Mail bosses say they have received just one complaint.

Councillor Knight said: “We were promised that the service would be a better service, maintained properly.

“At the present moment it is worse than ever.

“Going back two or three years we never had complaints like we are now. It saddens me to think we haven’t gone forwards, we have gone backwards.

“I want to see a big change and especially for the people of Ellesmere because people in Ellesmere are not happy with the overall situation.”

Councillor Ann Hartley said post was not being delivered to some parts of the town until 3pm, which was “detrimental” to businesses.

She said: “Before the delivery office was relocated this is what we feared, this is why we resisted it and this is why we fought it.

“We can almost say we told you so because we predicted this and we have been proven correct. The service has gone a little awry.”

Pearl Webster, the delivery office manager, said: “If I have got no complaints the only presumption I can make is that my postmen are doing the jobs they are trained to do and they are doing it properly.

“The only way I can judge the performance is by the level of complaints.

“Other than the one about the ambiguous address there was nothing.”