DOVER has not been successful in its bid to house a new Royal Mail centre providing contingency support for remote postcoding of badly or incompletely addressed mail.

The news was announced to postal workers at briefings today. A Royal Mail spokesman said they had been impressed with Dover's bid. "But we always made it clear Dover would be considered in competition with other sites and against strict criteria."

There is continuing concern that the international sorting office in Dover is to be run down and closed during the next few years.