Several hundreds of letters and cards went missing from St John's estate in Colchester earlier this summer.

It was reported last week that Royal Mail had apologised to an estate resident who lost three items of post in a month.

And the latest blunder by Royal Mail was caused by a postal worker - no longer working for the company - who for some reason did not deliver the huge batch of letters and parcels in June.

When the problem was discovered, mail was delivered to householders with a letter of apology.

A Royal Mail spokesman apologised to St John's customers for the postal worker who "failed to maintain the standards expected".

He said: "Royal Mail does take the integrity of its mail extremely seriously and such matters are always fully investigated. The vast majority of our employees are honest and hardworking and do their utmost to provide and efficient service to customers."

He stressed this incident was unconnected to the one last week where Heather Cant, of Upland Drive, was almost cut off from her mobile and cable telephones because bills had failed to arrive at her home.

Following publicity about this, Stephen Harvey, of Victoria Road, Lexden, also criticised Royal Mail for its delivery record, saying in the past four years his family had repeatedly received correspondence addressed to other people.

"Yesterday and today we received ten items of correspondence: five were for us and five for people with different names, two of which had different postcodes and one of which was clearly addressed to Victoria Court, not road."

He added he had contacted customer services a number of times and been told the matter had been solved.

"I have written again to them to point out that I shall seek to hold them liable in negligence for failures which result in any cost to me or embarrassment to my clients," he said.

"I suggest all who experience the same problems do likewise - we can then seek to deal publicly with this incompetence."

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