Fed-up residents living near the abandoned Barrack Road mail centre have had to put up with months of threatening behaviour from a handful of street drinkers, who camped at the site where they started fires and urinated in public.

Police officers were regularly called out to move them and the gang increased to a dozen drinkers recently after a dispersal order was made on Ash Street, where many of them had been gathering.

The subject was regularly brought up by police community support officers and residents at Semilong Community Forum meetings and Royal Mail have now acted by putting up a 6ft high metal fence.

A Royal Mail spokeswoman said: "We were aware of problems at the site and began a major clean up after listening to the concerns of the local community. Due to the hazardous nature of some of the materials, we used a specialist contractor to clear the site and a new fence has been erected to make it more secure."

Community leaders feared the problems at the Royal Mail site were diverting police resources from preventing more serious crimes and the police said yesterday they were pleased that Royal Mail had acted.

PCSO Ray Thorpe, of Castle Safer Community Team, said: "We had a number of calls about street drinking at the Barrack Road site.

"The SCT and Royal Mail decided to put a fence up around the property in a bid to tackle the problem. Hopefully this will now reduce the number of calls made to us about this problem, which is clearly of benefit to Northampton Police."

Councillor Tony Clarke (Ind, Castle) welcomed Royal Mail's action on the site but said the community would like to see even more done.

He said: "This is a good start but residents will only be satisfied once the site is redeveloped."