A Birmingham councillor is calling on Royal Mail to come clean over missing letters after a spate of post thefts in part of the city.

Coun Deirdre Alden (Con Edgbaston) is urging the postal service to inform residents in areas that have been affected by post thefts.

Royal Mail currently only informs people individually if their post has been recovered after a theft because the company is not able to identify which specific addresses have had post stolen if a bag of letters is snatched.

But Coun Alden said the policy needed to be changed because many people might have been expecting important post.

She raised the concerns after complaints from residents alerted her to a spate of post bags being stolen in Edgbaston over the last year.

She also raised concerns over 'red tape' constraints to post security.

Postmen can store surplus letters that they cannot take on their round in security boxes fixed on to the side of post boxes. However, each new security box involves Royal Mail having to go through a lengthy planning application with the local authority.

Coun Alden called for a more streamlined approach to securing planning permission for security boxes, along with more openness from Royal Mail over thefts.

She said: "I believe less thefts are likely to happen if more of these security boxes are installed - so why does Royal Mail have to go to so much trouble to get permission for them.

"If thefts do occur, it should be up to Royal Mail to tell everyone who might have been affected.

"It is no good waiting for residents to contact them because people are not going to know if they have had a letter stolen unless they are expecting something that has not turned up."

A Royal Mail spokesman said: "We do everything we can to secure mail and I know we have come across certain difficulties with the council over planning permission to site these boxes.

"Where we do get mail stolen, it is not going to be every address that was due mail for that day. So if we send letters to every address it can panic people unnecessarily.

"If we can obtain mail that was stolen, we send it on with a note saying why it has been delayed. It is a very difficult one for us to deal with."

Royal Mail was recently fined £11.7 million over "serious" breaches of its licence because of the amount of post which is lost, stolen or damaged, the industry's regulator said.

Postcomm said it proposed the financial penalty because of Royal Mail's failure to meet its obligations to protect letters and parcels. ..SUPL: