LATE postal deliveries are making a nonsense of the working day, say frustrated businesses who claim Royal Mail is treating Tavistock like a second class town. The once regular delivery time of 8am has gradually got later and in the past month post has not arrived until 11am on many mornings. Chairman of the Tavistock Business Association Dick Spackman, a partner in a firm of architects, said it was not good enough: ?There is great concern among the businesses because our customers and clients want a quick response and we cannot do that when our mail does not arrive until 11am. ?Staff need to be able to deal with the post first thing in the morning, not halfway through the morning. It makes a nonsense of the working day.? ?It?s disgraceful,? said John Taylor who runs a chartered surveying firm. ?It is very important for town businesses to get their mail on a reliable basis early in the morning. I need to go through the post before I go out and about. ?Our post contains lease documents and lawyers? correspondence and we cannot operate a professional business with a second class service like this.? Mr Taylor said he was not aware of other towns experiencing the same problems. Negotiator with Mansbridge and Balment Estate Agents Tim Baxter said an unreliable service and the cost of postage meant that the firm had switched to email as its main corresponding tool. ?There are documents for solicitors which we have to post but locally we hand deliver documents because it is more reliable. We send a lot of things second class because first class does not make any difference.? Mr Baxter said the staff in the Tavistock sorting office and the local postal workers were ?fantastic? but he believed Royal Mail was not the company it used to be. He said the bringing forward of the last collection time from 6.30pm to 5.30pm had also annoyed businesses because it was a case of having to finish early at 5.15pm to catch the post. ?There was no consultation with the businesses in the town and we have to go to Plymstock for a later collection.? A spokesperson for Royal Mail said: ?We have been making changes to the start times of our postmen and women which may result in some customers across Devon and Cornwall receiving a slightly later mail delivery. This is to ensure customers in the most south westerly area of England receive all mail due for delivery that day from the rest of the country.? Additional resources had been put into the Tavistock area further to minimise the effect on business customers, said the spokesperson, but she added it was early days in terms of the change and some deliveries might take a little longer while things bed down. Any customer experiencing continued problems should contact the Customer Service Centre on 08457 740 740 for assistance.