The Royal Mail clearly believes in its own service because a letter has arrived on my desk from area manager Paul Meddelton questioning our coverage of post deliveries in Burgess Hill.

We have reported in recent weeks how the town council said it had received a "significant number" of complaints from the public about a deteriorating service and had succeeded in arranging a public meeting on the issue.

Mr Meddelton says our "negative" coverage was met by "a deafening silence" by readers since only 11 people attended the meeting.

Furthermore, he says, Martin Johnson, senior manager responsible for Burgess Hill, told the meeting that independent research put the quality of the local service at 100 per cent and delivery targets agreed with the watchdog body had been exceeded.

Yet this doesn't explain why the same Mr Johnson told the meeting - as we reported - that staff would be increased by 10 per cent. Nor his comment "I am going to put my hands up and say 'fair cop, we have not got it right'." Nor his pledge that there would be an improved service in place by the end of August at the latest.

Mr Meddelton, meanwhile, says: "We assure your readers that we have not been, nor will be, complacent . . . and will always aim to provide the highest levels of service possible."

That, at least, is good news for Royal Mail users. And it seems to be working well so far - Mr Meddelton's letter arrived on my desk the morning after it was written!

Telscombe Town Council clerk Kathleen Verrall asks "how inaccurate is it possible to be?" about our report last Wednesday that the row over the possible sale of local cliff-top land to Southern Water to allow a controversial sewage works would dominate the first major meeting to be held in the new Telscombe Town Hall.

She says committee and council meetings have already been held in the new building in South Coast Road.

Our report, however, referred to the first "major" meeting to be held there because it was to be the first time some leading local figures, like Jean Talbot, of the Campaign for Residents Against Portobello, would have entered the new building.

The fact that almost 400 people subsequently tried to attend the meeting and there was no room for many of them seems to back up our report.

The clerk also says the debate was not to be about a sale of land but about Southern Water's request that if a planning appeal was successful, would the council be willing to negotiate on the same terms as before?

That, of course, would include selling, but then we wouldn't want to mislead the local population would we, Mrs Verrall? Again, what happened at the meeting endorsed our original report.

We mixed up English Nature and English Heritage in our story last Wednesday about an award for David and June Hobden's stewardship of meadows at St Dunstan's, near Heathfield.

Parts of the story and accompanying picture caption referred to English Heritage (old buildings and monuments) when in fact they should have read English Nature (nature conservation).

Thanks to English Nature's Steve Berry for pointing this out, together with the fact the story also spelled the name of his organisation's South East general manager as Tim Baines, when his surname is actually Bines.