Christine Hill, of Glen Cottage, has suffered misdirected mail and wandering workmen and now she fears the postal address means that the village is being incorporated into Burley-in-Wharfedale.

Miss Hill said: "Burley Woodhead has so been called for centuries, but along with post codes, a new name crept in - Woodhead.

"The full address is now Woodhead, Burley-in-Wharfedale."

Miss Hill said that although it seemed a minor matter, the situation had resulted in a series of problems. such as a worker from the gas board arriving after spending more than two hours searching for her address.

She said: "The gas board had followed the address given against the post code and had trailed round Burley-in-Wharfedale trying to find my house.

"As for the designated post code, this causes even more confusion as four houses have been lumped together as the Glen."

This system has meant that there have been a series of mix-ups for residents of the Glen, said Miss Hill.

She said: "The result is that one resident who has lived there since 1954 was told by a large department store that he didn't live there and had to show proof of residence by producing an electricity bill.

"I received a letter from BT saying they were sorry I had changed supplier and my phone would be cut off as requested. The letter was addressed to my house but with a neighbour's name on it.

"A neighbour received a gas bill and they don't have any gas in the house.

"The bill had my name on it but was addressed to them. The list is endless."

She added: "Maybe someone can finally get through to the Ministry of Public Confusion and unravel the situation."

But a spokesman for Royal Mail said that it was up to correspondents to include additional information on mail to make its desired

destination clear.

He said: "We want to help our customers to speed their mail on its way and the way to do this is to use the postcode so that letters can be read by our high-tech equipment. To sort letters this way is 20 times faster than by hand.

"As long as people include the post town and the post code, they are free to include in the address other information.

"The important thing to us, is that the post town and post code is included, which in this case is Ilkley.

"Councils adopt and designate street names, not Royal Mail and it isn't for us to comment on how other organisations use address information."

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