County names including Kent could soon be dropped from official postal addresses.

It follows complaints by customers to the postal watchdog Postcomm about the continued use of obsolete places like Sussex, Cleveland and Avon.

The postal service only requires a house number, street name and postcode to make a delivery.

The Daily Telegraph says the Royal Mail will start deleting county names from its Postal Address File - a database of all 23 million UK addresses - in 2013. They could be phased out entirely by 2016.

Ian Beesley, chairman of the board that advises the Royal Mail on the running of the database, told the newspaper that county names had become an unnecessary "vanity attachment".

He added: "People will still use counties but for postal purposes you don't need it."