Postal services in York are "at least one day" behind as North Yorkshire's main sorting office in Leeman Road, York, has remained closed since Friday due to flooding.

Royal Mail was forced to move 650 staff from the mail centre, which also serves as a delivery office for the York central and west areas, to alternative sites in the city.

The centre deals with more than one million items of mail a day and a spokesman said it was an "enormous task" to relocate staff and basic sorting equipment to other offices.

However, it was not possible to move the high-tech sorting machinery from the mail centre and mail is now being sorted by hand.

The machinery itself was not damaged, but heating and power are damaged at the site and the time needed to become operational again cannot be assessed until engineers can return to the building.

"We would like to apologise to customers for the continued inconvenience and disruption caused during this difficult time," said Alan Braithwaite, Royal Mail's area operations manager for York.

"I would like to reassure customers that we removed all the mail from Leeman Road as soon as it became clear that we would have to close the office.

"Our prime concern in evacuating the Leeman Road site was the health and safety of our staff."

Dedicated customer service helpline numbers have been set up for people to call if they have any mail queries and the numbers are 01904 528400 or 01904 528401, both during office hours.